Bad Endings Are Go
by michaelb958
Summary: International Rescue always save the day. That means there are so very many parallel universes where they don't. Here's a selection of them from the TAG-verse.
1. Faulty Trench

"Negative. It's not Dad's."

The resulting widespread aura of disappointment was almost audible across the International Rescue comm channel.

After a moment's silence for what could have been - _nah, we were probably kidding ourselves anyway._ Anyway, Virgil swiftly attempted to drag their aquanaut back on task. _"Sorry, Gordon. Now let's get back to work. I'm having a little trouble grabbing hold of the station."_

"Not so fast, Virgil." Gordon had been captivated by the glowing object sharing the fault trench with his submarine. "Whatever it is I'm looking at, it shouldn't be here...!"

The object soon added fuel to that theory by glowing in a much harsher fashion. At the same time, Gordon felt rather than heard a distinct rumbling in the water. "Uh oh! ...John, it's a seaquake!"

John, in Thunderbird Five, had come to the same conclusion. _"Thunderbird Four, get out of there!"_

"Oh, no. John! Thunderbird Five!-ungh."

A little yellow submarine lay at the bottom of the fault trench under a fallen rock. Its lights were off and nobody was home.

 _"Gordon, come in. Thunderbird Four, can you read me? Gordon!"_

* * *

 _"International Rescue, we're having another seaquake! ...We've just lost half the legs!"_

The research lab, robbed of support on one side, was now tilting dangerously towards the chasm it was meant to be researching. Thunderbird One, now supporting a significant portion of the lab's weight, strained under the added load.

"Increasing thrust to compensate." Scott looked nearly as stressed as he felt. "You need to get a grip on this thing fast, Thunderbird Two, or I'm going under."

Fortunately, Thunderbird Two chose that moment to cooperate, finally latching onto the lab and pulling it upright to Virgil's triumphant call of "Okay, I've got it!" As the lab's three crew steadied themselves on whatever they could, the pilots above shared a sigh of relief. "As long as we keep it stable, it should hold out long enough for Gordon to do the evac."

"FAB. I just hope John can get in contact with him soon."

But the minutes dragged on, and the quakes kept coming, and John couldn't.

 _"Still nothing from Gordon. I'm worried about him."_

"Virgil, if you have a plan B, make it quick. I'm not sure how much longer we can hold on."

"I'm not sure either, and since when did we have a plan B?"

 _"International Rescue, the control room is flooding. Just - get us out of here!"_

(At this point on the island, Alan and Kayo finally got back from orbit, the former complaining that "We leave the planet for a few hours and the whole world falls apart!" and the latter reminding him that "At least it has TV.")

After an interminable wait, Scott decided the situation was as bad as it could be allowed to get. "Okay, we can't wait any longer for Gordon. Thunderbird Five, have the crew prepare for immediate evac. Are there any other ways they could get out?"

* * *

"This is Thunderbird Five. I have the lab's floorplan. There's an emergency hatch, ventral starboard midships - if they can operate it."

 _"No good. We've tried it already; it's jammed,"_ the station commander pitched in.

"I don't see any other way built in." John examined his scan some more. "The breach letting the water in - where is it?"

 _"Sublevel six, right on the bottom."_

"All right. It's big enough for you to escape - can you get there?"

 _"There's too much current right now. If the water stops flooding in through it, we might make it."_

"Right." John considered their options. "As strange as it may seem, the best way to stop the current is to flood the entire lab as fast as possible. Sealab crew, seal any sections that aren't flooded, and open all hatches to sections that are still flooding - you need to fill every breached section to stop the current."

 _"And you need to do it fast,"_ Scott added. _"We can't hold this thing up forever."_

* * *

 _"Thunderbird Five to Thunderbirds One and Two. The lab is filling up faster - the crew must be making progress."_

 _"International Rescue, we've opened everything we can. We'll swim out as soon as the current stops. I'm hoping it's soon."_

"So am I. That lab is seriously heavy." Virgil considered his position. Thunderbird Two had been hovering under great strain for the past twenty minutes, holding an undersea research lab up and stopping it from taking a fall which would certainly kill its crew. Thunderbird One was theoretically assisting, but looked in worse shape itself, being pulled much closer to the water. And - oh dear.

 _"Thunderbird Five, detecting another seaquake."_

"I can confirm that!"

Both airborne Thunderbirds strained to keep the lab upright as the seafloor betrayed it yet again. It was at this least opportune time that the lab started transmitting again. "It isn't looking good in here! Isn't there anything you can do?!"

"I'm afraid not. It's all we can do to stop - ugh," Virgil's craft bucked again as the quake spiked, "stop the lab falling as it is."

 _"The shock's breached another section,"_ Thunderbird Five reported far too calmly. _"You're in for another couple of minutes."_

 _"Better be fast minutes,"_ Scott muttered. _"I'm not exactly flying a submarine here."_

* * *

 _"International Rescue, the current's stopped. We're swimming out now."_

 _"Understood. I'll guide you out. Turn right at the end of this passageway..."_

As John's directions faded into the background, Scott sighed - he'd gotten out of this without the paint on his 'bird getting wet.

Naturally, the universe punished this premature assumption by yanking it down again.

"Ugh! The lab is shifting... it's going to flip any second!"

 _"Thunderbird Five to lab crew. If you're going to get out, now would be a good time!"_

Another lurch. Thunderbird One thudded into the ocean surface, spraying the interior with saltwater.

 _"The lab's too heavy!"_ Virgil was in an unchacteristic panic by now. _"It's pulling us both under!"_

Another lurch. "Thunderbird One to Thunderbird Two, I have to disengage or take a bath!"

 _"Thunderbird Five to lab crew, what's your status?"_

Another lurch. Thunderbird One peeled off, unable to sink any lower. Thunderbird Two strained under the added load.

 _"Thunderbird Five to lab crew, come in please."_

Another lurch, and the lab toppled over the edge. Thunderbird Two began an inexorable descent -

 _"Thunderbird Five to lab crew, can you hear me?"_

\- until one of its clamps ripped the composite sheet it was attached to off the station body. The other promptly followed, and the lab fell to its doom.

Now notably higher above the ocean, Virgil took a moment to collect himself. As he did, Scott was adding his voice to the inquisition. "Lab crew, this is International Rescue. Do you read me?"

The silence stretched far too long, until - _"I... The, ah, two of us are okay."_

"I thought there were three."

 _"The commander didn't make it out. He was going to be last out the hole. Knocked his head when the lab dropped, and it took him with it."_

All involved shared a moment's silence.

 _"Could you pick us up?"_

* * *

"Certainly. Thunderbird Two's recovery module is waiting almost directly above you - just swim up."

 _"Gladly."_

With the mission complete - mostly, anyway - John turned his attention to other matters. "Scott, Virgil, I still can't find Gordon. We're going to have to come back for him later."

 _"Are you seriously -"_ _"John, we can't just -"_

"Guys. Gordon will be fine. He'll find a way to get in touch."

Thunderbirds One and Two reluctantly departed for home base.

Thunderbird Five's occupant moved for the space elevator. He'd never actually lost track of their aquanaut. It was just that every diagnostic he'd run had told him that the [lack of] heartbeat had been accurate for at least thirty minutes.

* * *

 **Non-canon bonus section!**

"This is rather alarming. There's a note here, addressed to International Rescue. It says, 'Press me, and all your questions will be answered'...?"

Lady Penelope's find in the warehouse was met with skepticism.

"I say we press the button and deal with the consequences." Scott, usually not the impulsive one, seemed to be making an exception.

Alan decided it was time for Genre Savvy. "I smell a trap."

(Grandma noted that "I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole.")

"I want answers."

"I'm telling you, trap."

John, substitute voice of reason in Scott's absence, decided that the oldest-youngest bickering was getting them nowhere. "Kayo, what do you think?"

"It definitely looks dodgy, but... what's the worst that could happen?"

In the warehouse, Parker apparently shared her opinion. With a remark to that effect, he reached for the button.

"Parker-!"

He pressed the button.

 ** _KABOOM_**


	2. The Other Deadly Dish

_A/N: Unlike last chapter, this one will be a sequence of short pieces, each unrelated to the others. Long format will be back next chapter._

* * *

Trusting in Thunderbird Two's imminent arrival, Scott jetted in the direction of the access hatch in the center of the collector - just as the sun peeked over the mountains. _Argh! I knew I should have started earlier!_

"I'm at the hatch."

 _"Scott, you need to get in there or you'll be a baked potato."_

"I feel like one already!"

He reached the hatch without much trouble, and a Scott Tracy Signature Jetpack Maneuver transferred him from the lip of the hatch into the passage behind it. Or it would have, had his jetpack not picked that exact moment to cut out. "Argh!"

There was silence - apart from some exertive noises, which he didn't broadcast - until Virgil checked in several seconds later. _"I've arrived. All right, I'm going to - Scott! Get through that hatch!"_

"I'm - urgh - trying! Jetpack's fried!"

 _"You need an assist?"_

Silence.

Scott let go of the hatch lip and tumbled down the collector dish. That looked painful.

 _"Scott! Come in!"_

Silence.

Scott's body hit the rocks limply. That somehow looked _more_ painful.

 _"Thunderbird One, talk to me!"_

Dead silence.

* * *

In the wake of the failure to redirect the dish's component mirrors, Scott came to a sudden realisation (and not a second too soon). "We need to destroy this dish... I need options, Brains! Fast!"

 _"Here! T-the primary support beam. Remove it, and the dish will detach! I'm s-sending you coordinates now."_

"Virgil, get those engineers out. I'm taking out the dish."

 _"Are you sure about this, Scott?"_ Of course Virgil just _had_ to interject.

"It's what Dad would have done." With that, Scott bolted for the back of the dish, and the primary support beam.

He eventually got to a 'stable' perch, and began to cut through the beam. Brains' souped-up long-range laser cutter proved surprisingly effective. "Virgil, I'm cutting my way through."

Virgil was evacuating the trapped collector staff and didn't have time to respond.

Forty seconds later, having evacuated the collector staff, Virgil wondered what was taking Scott so long. He swiftly found Scott on the ground, his neck broken; he'd clearly slipped while cutting.

Virgil tried to pigeonhole his grief as he directed Thunderbird Two to rip out the primary support beam at the weakened point.

* * *

"It's what Dad would have done." With that, Scott bolted for the back of the dish, and the primary support beam.

He eventually got to a stable perch, and began to cut through the beam. Brains' souped-up long-range laser cutter proved surprisingly effective. "Virgil, I'm cutting my way through."

Virgil was evacuating the trapped collector staff and didn't have time to respond.

In some ways not a moment too soon, but in others all too soon, enough of the beam had been cut through that the rest gave way under the huge load of the collector dish. Scott, following his instinctive directional sense, held on tight as his world turned sideways, then clambered up the back of the dish as it fell.

Taiwanese cleanup personnel eventually found Virgil's mangled body, his hand still on the remote controls for his Thunderbird. He'd misjudged the falling dish's position, left his escape too late, and been crushed by its sheer mass as it made its inexorable way down the mountain. The three workers he'd saved said he'd stayed back operating the 'rescue couch' to make sure they were safe - he'd just stayed back too long, and ended up giving his life to ensure theirs.

* * *

"It's what Dad would have done." With that, Scott bolted for the back of the dish, and the primary support beam.

He eventually got to a stable perch, and began to cut through the beam. Brains' souped-up long-range laser cutter proved surprisingly effective. "Virgil, I'm cutting my way through."

Virgil was evacuating the trapped collector staff and didn't have time to respond.

In some ways not a moment too soon, but in others all too soon, enough of the beam had been cut through that the rest gave way under the huge load of the collector dish. Scott, following his instinctive directional sense, held on tight as his world turned sideways, then clambered up the back of the dish as it fell.

Taiwanese cleanup personnel eventually found Virgil's mangled body. He'd misjudged the falling dish's position while operating the 'rescue couch' and left his escape just too late; he'd made a futile flying leap to try and grab the rescue couch even as he retracted it to safety. The three workers he'd saved with that rescue couch spoke fondly of his selflessness and determination; he'd tried briefly to outrun the dish, and then made a desperate attempt to climb up it as it bore down on him, but had failed and been crushed beneath it as it made its inexorable way down the mountain.

* * *

"It's what Dad would have done." With that, Scott bolted for the back of the dish, and the primary support beam.

He eventually got to a stable perch, and began to cut through the beam. Brains' souped-up long-range laser cutter proved surprisingly effective. "Virgil, I'm cutting my way through."

Virgil was evacuating the trapped collector staff and didn't have time to respond.

In some ways not a moment too soon, but in others all too soon, enough of the beam had been cut through that the rest gave way under the huge load of the collector dish. Scott, following his instinctive directional sense, held on tight as his world turned sideways, then clambered up the back of the dish as it fell.

As he crested the edge, he was greeted with the relieving sight of all three workers - and Virgil - on the 'rescue couch'. (Well, he wasn't entirely sure how Virgil was hanging on, but whatever.) Thus satisfied in mission success, he fired up his jetpack to escape. Or would have, had it responded.

"Gaah! The heat must have fried my jetpack!"

 _"Scott!"_ How Virgil was talking and still hanging on, neither of them really knew.

Scott could only scream as he careened down the face of the mountain.

 _"Scott!_ _ **Scott! Do you read me?!**_ _"_

He didn't.

Taiwanese cleanup personnel eventually recovered his mangled body from the dish's final resting place. Nobody could recover his Thunderbird from under it.

* * *

 _"One more thing. There's an automated status signal sent every thirty seconds. You'll have to attach the bypass module between bursts."_

"Sure." Alan mentally steeled himself to open the hatch.

 _"Stand by,"_ called Thunderbird Five. _"In three, two, one, -"_

 _Beep!_

Alan opened the hatch.

 _"You have twenty-nine seconds, Alan."_

 _I know that, John. Start with the red one-_

 _"One false move, and the Hood will be alerted."_

"No pressure." _You're not helping, John. Now, was it purple or blue next? Purple. I think. Maybe it was blue. No, green comes after blue, and green is before purple. Or maybe that was pink. No, wait, I'm meant to start with orange. No, red. No, I always thought it was orange!_

 _"It's just like fixing a TV, Alan,"_ Kayo's voice floated over from Thunderbird Three. _"You can do this."_

 _Hokay, I can. I know the order. Red, blue, green. Don't touch purple. One, two, three, done!_ "Bypass module attached. ...The hatch is sealed!"

Thunderbird Five should have been happy with that pronouncement. Instead, _"Uh oh."_

"Uh, John? What's wrong?"

 _"Shut them down, Brains! All of them! ...I hate to say it, Alan, but you were milliseconds too slow on that hatch."_ A few seconds passed while Alan stewed. _"No dice on the shutdown. The Hood got a command in first. They're self-destructing."_

Kayo sounded confused as she interjected. _"I didn't see a self-destruct in our sample."_

 _"Simple,"_ John replied sadly. _"They stop listening and shake themselves apart. And whatever's around them."_

Alan was _really_ getting that sinking feeling now. "H-how long will that take?"

 _"Brains is telling me several hours. Thunderbirds One and Two, if you want a rest stop, now would be a good time. It's the worst case."_


	3. Space Case

_A/N: You know how I said this chapter would be long-form? Change of plan. I wasn't going to do Space Race here, having already covered it in another fic (:P), but then I realised I was skipping so many fascinating failure scenarios. Crosscut will be long-form, I promise._

* * *

 _"Scanners aren't picking anything up. Are you sure it isn't dirt on your portal?_ _ **Again?**_ _"_

Alan knew 'it' was outside Thunderbird Three, but took a moment to clear the supposed speck of dirt anyway. "Nope! It's out there, all right. And that means I get to go for a wander."

 _"Any excuse,"_ John muttered to himself in Thunderbird Five.

It was the work of a few seconds for Alan to check his suit, grab his surfboard, and open the hatch to go EVA. Within half a minute he was edging carefully around the ...whatever the heck it was. "Are you getting this, Thunderbird Five?"

 _"Affirmative. Running a trace, Thunderbird Three."_

He advanced on what looked like a control panel at the front of the thing, with a creeping feeling that it looked pretty menacing for space junk. _Ooh, there's a display. Better take a look at that._ Wiping off the dust that had accumulated on it revealed a "no signal" indicator. Which swiftly changed to a "proximity alert" indicator.

"Uh, John? This thing is on."

 _"Alan, you need to get out of there_ _ **now!**_ _"_

Alan started to back away, but far too late. The mine went off, obliterating him and his spacecraft.

As alarms blared on Thunderbird Five, John could only watch the expanding debris cloud - and track the effects of the EMP. "Computer, call Colonel Casey, maximum priority."

* * *

 _"I'm detecting a cluster of spacecraft heading toward the debris field. If one of them strays too close, it could target them, and boom."_

As if on cue, the stealth mine started pulling on its grapple line.

"So I'm going to have to keep it busy until you find the kill code."

 _"Looks that way. You'll have to get it locked on to Thunderbird Three, instead of something else."_

"How about I drag this baby out into deep space and detonate it there?"

 _"Good plan,"_ John signed off. _"Just be careful."_

Alan disconnected the grapple line. "Right. I'll _carefully_ fly towards the floating bomb. Firing main thrusters in three, two, one-"

...

 _"It's locked on to you, Thunderbird Three,"_ Brains advised from the ground.

Alan shifted his focus to staying _just_ out of the mine's reach. The Earth was soon receding behind him. "Moving out of orbit."

 _"Alan, w-wait! It's equipped with a-"_

The mine went off, obliterating him and his spacecraft.

 _"-gravitational trigger,"_ Brains completed his sentence to a diminished audience.

As alarms blared on Thunderbird Five, John could only watch the expanding debris cloud - and track the effects of the EMP. "Computer, call Colonel Casey, maximum priority."

* * *

 _"Okay, I'm in to the digital archives,"_ said Thunderbird Five, _"but I'm going to need the mine's unique ID number to access the kill code."_

 _"But the mine can't be scanned."_ Brains seemed to have a negative answer to everything today. _"The only way to view its ID number is to find its tag on the fuselage."_

Alan, being Alan, immediately formulated a plan. "I'm on it. Killing main thrusters..."

Thunderbird Three's inertia and RCS thrusters carried it in a miniature orbit around the mine. Squinting through the windscreen, Alan could just about make out the characters on the tag.

Unfortunately, he was now too close to it, and the mine went off, obliterating him and his spacecraft.

As alarms blared on Thunderbird Five, John could only watch the expanding debris cloud - and track the effects of the EMP. "Computer, call Colonel Casey, maximum priority."

* * *

As Thunderbird Three entered a well-used orbit, its pursuer stopped. Alan couldn't quite believe it. "Hey, did it just die? ...Brains, any ideas?"

 _"It's hard to determine without reliable data."_

Suffice to say he was the only one with such an idealistic hypothesis, and the universe was quick to shoot it down - the mine shot off after another vessel.

"Aah! Brains?"

 _"That ship is c-closer to the mine than Thunderbird Three!"_

"Oh no, no! Brains, how do I get it back on my tail?"

 _"Get very close to the mine, and it will retarget you!"_

"Oh, great."

Suffice to say that playing chicken with a stealth mine over a civilian cargo ship was an experience like no other.

"Did that work?"

 _"Negative, Thunderbird Three. It's still targeting the other ship."_

With no other option, Alan pushed his luck and his Thunderbird further.

 _"Careful, Alan,"_ warned Thunderbird Five, to the exasperation of everyone else on the channel.

This exasperation was very short-lived, as Thunderbird Three was retargeted, to an oddly triumphant _"You did it! It's retargeted you"_ from Brains. Unfortunately, while it had acquired the mine's attention, it now had no hope of avoiding a collision with the civilian ship. Moments before impact, the mine went off, obliterating both spacecraft and their crews.

As alarms blared on Thunderbird Five, John could only watch the expanding debris cloud - and track the effects of the EMP. "Computer, call Colonel Casey, maximum priority."

* * *

 _"Thunderbird Three, this is Thunderbird One. I hear things are rough up there, Alan."_

The surprise of this appallingly timed communication caused Alan to fumble the curving maneuver around a civilian cargo ship, forcing him to cut it too close. The mine went off, obliterating both spacecraft and their crews.

As alarms blared on Thunderbird Five, John could only watch the expanding debris cloud - and track the effects of the EMP. "Computer, call Colonel Casey, maximum priority."

* * *

"The Grey Ninja 'ere. I've made it to the main h'archives."

 _"FAB, uh, Grey Ninja."_ John hadn't heard _that_ callsign before.

"Just like old times," Parker mused to himself.

 _"Head to your left until you hit a junction."_

Parker did. And stopped short at the sight of the junction. "Cor, blimey..." The place went on forever!

 _"You're going to have to get to the very end of the facility."_

Parker dived beneath the walkway to evade the notice of two inconveniently timed staff.

 _"If you run along the duct below you, you should be able to get there undetected."_

Parker dropped onto the duct.

-landed inconveniently, lost his balance, fell over the side, and failed to grab on to the side of the duct on his way down. It would be a while before anyone found that particular mangled body.

John's heart sank.

* * *

Parker dived beneath the walkway to evade the notice of two inconveniently timed staff.

 _"If you run along the duct below you, you should be able to get there undetected."_

Parker dropped onto the duct and started running.

Several very long minutes of directed exploration later, he shuffled awkwardly across to a bin marked XZ15 and pulled out a file marked XZ157. "That wasn't so 'ard."

Then he fumbled the file, and could only watch as it dropped into the chasm below.

"...Grey Ninja 'ere, I've ...dropped the file."

John's heart sank.

* * *

"I really think we should hand 'em over to the GDF, sir."

"This is Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward we've got here - that'll cause a heck of a scene."

"So?" said the head of the Consolidated File Archive, London branch. "There are procedures to be followed."

Penelope's compact beeped as she was being led away. _Well, it won't make this any worse._ "John, we've been apprehended."

 _"Into GDF custody?"_

"I think so."

 _"They'll side with me. When do they get there?"_

"Not within three minutes."

John's heart sank.


	4. Radio Inactive

Thunderbird Two activated its VTOL thrusters and gracefully came to a stop about twenty metres to the right of Thunderbird One, facing some way clockwise of the former Van Arkel uranium mine. "Thunderbird Five was right, that storm is heading our way," Virgil commented from inside. "You nearly done, Thunderbird One?"

No answer.

"Scott?"

Dead silence.

"Thunderbird Five, what kind of mess has Scott gotten himself into this time?" The joviality in Virgil's tone masked the inescapable feeling of _oh no not again_ that he felt.

John was also feeling it. _"He's on the lowest level, I can tell you that much. You know how well the tracker signals work through that much rock."_

"Any idea what he's doing down there?"

 _"Negative. I thought he was keeping you in the loop - hold on. His tracker just went dead!"_

"I'm _really_ hoping it just went out of range."

 _"The cutoff was too sudden for that."_

"In that case, I'm _really_ hoping my idiot brother turned it off for some stupid reason. Try and get in touch with him, will ya? I'm going down in a pod."

* * *

"Thunderbird Five, this is the Mole. I've reached Scott's last known location. No sign of him."

 _"Bother. We need to find him, soon."_

"John, there _is_ someone else down here who might be in trouble. I want to have a look for them."

 _"Sure. But be careful. Radiation readings are high down there. Not to mention the storm's on its way; you'll have to close up the mine within twenty minutes."_

"Timer set. Now scanning for life readings. ... ...There's nobody down here. Nowhere close, anyway. And still nothing on Scott's tracker."

 _"And he's still not talking to me. Check his path for clues, would you? We need to find him."_

* * *

"Thunderbird Five, this is Thunderbird Two. I'm at the top of the mine's lift shaft. Scott definitely went down here; his grapple pack's still tethered here."

 _"Can you retrieve it? Check it for damage?"_

"I think so. Just - urgh - here we go. Check the camera; I'll run the cable past it."

Two hundred metres of cable later, _"No dice. This grapple pack is as good as the day Brains fabricated it."_

"I'd expect nothing less from Brains. Where to next, Thunderbird Five?"

 _"I'm not sure."_ Scott had never gone entirely missing before, and it was putting John on edge. _"How's that lift?"_

"Halfway up." Virgil paused. "That's a weird spot for a lift to be."

 _"And further down than that grapple pack went..."_

"I'll take the Mole down and find the next pack."

* * *

 _About two hundred metres down_

 _"This pack's good, Thunderbird Two. Take the Mole down again."_

* * *

 _About four hundred metres down_

"So he got here okay. Down we go again."

* * *

 _About six hundred metres down_

 _"Stop."_ In the virtual face of command-mode John, Virgil stopped. _"Run that section past the camera again."_ He did. _"That... that's not good."_

"What's the situation, Thunderbird Five?"

 _"That segment there,"_ John highlighted a segment of cable on Virgil's HUD, _"has been pinched. Hard. Harder than a human could have."_

"Could I have done it by accident with the powersuit? Or could it have swung against the rocks?"

 _"Not without either of us noticing. Heavy-duty equipment was responsible, likely industrial."_

Understandably, Virgil was having trouble wrapping his head around this. "What - or who - would have done that? And why?" were his next questioning words.

 _"I don't know. Hopefully Scott knows. We really need to find him."_

"And be out of here inside ten minutes... Stay put, Scott, you great idiot. I can get to you faster that way."

* * *

"Okay, Thunderbird Five, I'm back on the lowest level. Still nothing here but us chickens."

 _"I don't know about that; you're certainly no spring chicken."_

"Says my older brother. Wait, did you hear that?"

 _"Hear what?"_

"I think I picked up Scott's tracker for a moment there."

 _"Retrace your steps._ _ **Exactly.**_ _"_

"Sheesh, John, I know how to do this. ...There it is again. It's coming from over there."

 _"Signal strength is weak, so probably a ways away."_

"That way lies an old storage locker. Shielded. If the tracker's in there, that could explain it."

 _"What about Scott?"_

"I hate to think."

* * *

Virgil stared silently at the contents of the storage locker.

 _"Oh God,"_ John managed to whisper out, eyes glued to his screen.

"Dear universe," Virgil announced to nobody in particular, "when I said, 'what kind of mess has Scott gotten himself into this time?'," his voice became particularly anguished, " _I was joking!_ "

Before their eyes lay the worst possible scenario. Scott Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird One, had pushed his luck too far for the last time, and judging by the temperature of his mangled body, he'd done it some time ago. Neither John nor Virgil had needed to say anything for both to know that there would be no reviving him.

"Augh."

 _"Virgil."_

Virgil didn't say anything.

 _"Virgil!"_

One got the impression he was trying to suppress sobs.

 _"_ _ **Virgil!**_ _"_ John's voice, as much as it ever expressed emotion, seemed laden with the same. _"We've still got a mission._ _ **The living take priority.**_ _"_

"...'kay. Just give me a minute."

 _"Just be aware you're down to eight minutes now."_

 _Okay Virgil. Breathe in. ...Breathe out. ...Breathe in, ...breathe out._

He frowned as that last breath sounded a bit hydraulic for his liking, even after accounting for his motion in the powersuit.

If he'd been a bit quicker with that realisation, he might have seen the mining mech swinging its claw at him. As it was, he just careened into the wall and blacked out.

* * *

Ugh. What had he _done_ last night?

 _"Virgil, wake up. Virgil! Virgil, can you hear me?!"_

Apparently he'd gone on a rescue and not come back. "Gah. John? What's going on?"

 _"I'm assuming you're not in the Mole."_

"...no?"

 _"Get out of that godforsaken mine now. Someone's taken the Mole."_

"Up to the surface. Without me." Virgil was certainly wide awake now. "...Aw hell, what happened to the elevator?"

Two of International Rescue's finest minds processed the shattered pieces of the lift platform, the absence of the Mole, the corpse in the storage locker, and the pinched grapple cable, and came to a conclusion they really did not like. At all. Virgil wasted no time hotwiring the lift mechanism and straddling it as it went up. "John, status of the Mole?"

 _"Approaching Thunderbird Two's module."_

"Close the module, John!"

The lift went _whirrrrr_.

 _"Module closed and redocked."_

Virgil breathed a sigh of relief.

 _"You'll reach the surface in four minutes. I've called the GDF; a squad will be here in five to take custody of the hostile."_

It was one thing to arrive too late to save someone on a rescue; it was a feeling that all of International Rescue were intimately familiar with. It was quite another when the lost was one of their own. It would be hard on any organisation. On a family? With Virgil's relief came reflection, and with reflection returned horror. As the handicapped lift carried Virgil up to the surface, the scale of the events below began to sink in. "John," he whispered, his voice shaking. "We just lost Scott."

John didn't speak; he just breathed. In. ...Out. ...In. ...Out.

"John..."

 _"I... I know, Virgil. I'm, I'm just trying to get the mission done."_

"Catch now, cry later...?"

 _"Yeah. ...Yeah."_

The contemplative silence that followed was abruptly broken by the same alarm blasting at both of them. Virgil should have recognised it first, but was excused given his state of mind. John leapt to his virtual console, diagnosed the cause within three seconds, and ...well, it was his turn to feel dread.

 _"The Mole has breached the module. I'm dropping it now."_

An icy rage ran through Virgil. How _dare_ they? Whoever had killed his older brother should have stopped there. But no, now they'd desecrated his 'bird. Heads would roll.

 _"Oh no."_

The icy rage was replaced with panic. "John? What's happening?!"

 _"Intruder triggered the lift before I could drop the module. They have access to the flight deck."_

The panic was replaced with a plain icy feeling. Whoever was on the flight deck of a Thunderbird was the ultimate arbiter of control; they could lock out any attempt to remotely control it - whether from a wristborne remote, Thunderbird Five, or the island computer core.

 _"Virgil, we need a plan."_

The fact that John Tracy, International Rescue space monitor, font of all knowledge (as Scott was always quick to complain ( _oh god, Scott_ )), was asking _him_ for a plan somehow reinforced the bleakness of the situation. He'd considered this impossible, given that Thunderbird Two had been hijacked, but apparently it _was_ possible.

So Virgil tried to pull himself together and plot something. It made his head hurt, but he eventually came up with a plan, which he outlined to John. It was unnerving how John didn't really argue with him over anything at all.

"Oh, and update the GDF squad."

 _"Will do."_

 _This is getting way out of hand._

* * *

The military say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is a wise maxim for any plan, no matter the enemy.

The lift came to a stop at the top of the mineshaft right on schedule, and Virgil wasted no time hauling himself onto blessed surface dirt, clearing the shaft and shutting it down. For good measure, he set his laser cutter to weld and made a few quick gestures at the radiation door with it. "I hereby declare this uranium mine closed for business."

 _"And just in time, too. The storm's here."_

 _Thank you, Space Monitor Obvious_ , Virgil thought as he ran through the control room and emerged into the chill wind of a storm in central Africa. Thunderbird One sat forlornly to his right, waiting for a pilot who would never return. Thunderbird Two powered up in front of him. _Right. Someone needs a talking-to._

Exactly as arranged, John took remote control over Two, and it powered off again.

"International Rescue to whoever's in Thunderbird Two." For the first time since the storage locker ( _oh god, Scott_ ), Virgil's voice over the radio was calm and clear. "We can still talk about this. We're not going to hurt you. Just come down from there, and we can work out what's going to happen."

Thunderbird Two overrode its remote control, powered up, and rose into the air, sans module. " **Bite me,** " said its occupant.

 _Well, we weren't really expecting that to work,_ Virgil mused as he ran for his best hope of getting back into Thunderbird Two: Thunderbird One. John was even deploying the pilot's chair - all he had to do was get in.

Thunderbird Two apparently disagreed with this course of action, because it _swooped_ at him and it was all he could do to duck under it.

"Gah!"

" **Stop.** "

"Not on my watch!" Virgil yelled as he got up and kept running for One. "Nice try."

It was as something slammed him into the ground that things really started to go wrong.

* * *

 _"Aah! They grappled me!"_ said Virgil over the still-open comm line to Thunderbird Five.

John glanced at the live diagram of Thunderbird Two; sure enough, a grapple line had been fired into the dirt, and Virgil was on the other end. "Virgil, get it off. Now."

 _"Rrrrgh - I can't! It's magnetised to the Jaws!"_

And in more bad news, the grapple line reeled in.

 _"Okay, this is - ow - not fun."_ Virgil repeatedly drove his armoured elbows into the magnetic grip, to no avail. _"Wouldn't have done it to the Marianas rich idiot if I'd known -"_ The subtle sound of the firing mechanism charging. _"Fly One out_ _ **AAH!**_ _"_ The medical sensors said he'd blacked out upon meeting the ground again.

"Virgil!" John spoke frantically even as he ordered Thunderbird One to depart the scene with all possible haste. "Talk to me!"

Thunderbird Two fired another grapple line. This one very nearly kept Thunderbird One in place. Fortunately, One's main engine ignited at that very moment, and the blast of exhaust pushed the magnet away long enough for One to make good its escape.

It was probably for the best that Thunderbird Two's pilot couldn't feel anything as his craft descended into a precise hover over him, a VTOL thruster perfectly positioned to cook him. The medical sensors in the Jaws of Life failed at the same time as the rest of the suit, the delicate internal mechanism(s) melted to slag or burnt to a crisp.

As Thunderbird Two rose from its victim, John had other problems - he'd just now managed to get in contact with the GDF flyer. As its pilot saw Two grow larger in the windscreen, the frantic voice of Thunderbird Five blared across its speakers. "Thunderbird Two is hostile! Break off! Break off!"

It was a bit late for that. Grapple lines streamed out from Two and attached to the tail and port wing of the flyer. Seconds later, as Two charged in the opposite direction, the sudden jerk on the well-attached cables tore off three of the five aerofoils (and one of the two engines) like squares from a chocolate bar. Without horizontal stabilisers or balanced lift (or VTOL thrust) the craft was doomed, and Thunderbird Five could only watch helplessly as it nosedived into the landscape.

"Computer, call Colonel Casey. Maximum priority."

 _"John. Status update."_

"Send interceptors."

The look on his face told her everything she needed to know.

* * *

 _A/N: Well, that took a while. Sorry. I wanted it to be ...well, can't do perfect, but I wanted it to be good._

 _Also, rest assured that this fic will continue all the way into Season 2 (when I get there). That's a promise._


	5. Fireball

_"I know what decompression feels like. This isn't it."_

* * *

 _"They found the_ real _Captain Hansen a few minutes ago, tied up in a crew locker."_

* * *

 _"Now where's the saboteur who sabotaged my sabotage?"_

* * *

 _"Your timing is terrible. You'll lead the Hood right to me! ... ...Give me fifteen seconds and call back."_

* * *

 _Beep, beep._

The Hood frowned. Fireflash's cargo hold did not make that noise.

A rival with a bomb on board? That would be a disaster. But why would it beep? Any idiot knew that bombs were silent - until they went off.

He approached the source. It was a communicator of some kind, on a wristband. Light blue; Tanusha's favourite colour.

Come to think of it, he'd seen a young woman with the right appearance in a light blue shirt in the cabin.

 _Tanusha's here._

 _Where?_

He was so focused on the nearby cluster of crates that he didn't see the other crate coming.

* * *

Kayo breathed a sigh of relief. The Hood was out cold.

 _He's not going to wake up; and if he does, he's smart enough not to cripple the tin can he's stuck in._

She clambered out of the hold, en route to the flight deck to cut the flow of sleeping gas (she was getting a little light-headed already as the concentration in the plane skyrocketed).

* * *

The Hood was not out cold for long.

He was also deeply familiar with the frail sack of meat that was his physical presence in the world. The moment he awoke, he felt it screaming. Apparently humans weren't built to take two-hundred-kilogram cargo crates at running pace. Or possibly he just hadn't been working out enough before this mission. It was moot; he wasn't getting off this plane without a GDF 'escort'.

 _I've lost._

 _But they don't have to win..._

After the longest two-meter crawl of his life he could reach his trusty shock baton, the perfect instrument of vengeance. He clawed himself up the wall, feeling like he weighed five thousand kilograms. All the while, the asset he'd most neglected - his body - made its displeasure known.

He reached the avionics panel, and swiped at it with the charged shock baton. Nothing happened.

He upped the charge to maximum and stabbed the panel. There was a satisfying electrical explosion.

 _Fix that, Tanusha._

He slumped to the floor, exhausted.

The shock baton slipped out of the wrecked avionics panel and fell towards his torso.

 _Oh bugger._

* * *

There was a terrible disturbance on the flight deck, as if dozens of circuit breakers suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. This, and the fuel leak alarm, drove Kayo back down to the hold - _why are there so many bloody stairs on this plane_ \- to examine the cause.

 _You're kidding me._

The avionics panel had given up the ghost - there was no way she could repair it - so her concern fell to her uncle.

Her heart nearly stopped in sympathy.

 _Not like this._

No pulse, no defibrillator (she considered using the shock baton, but it was drained), and no time for CPR.

 _Not like this!_

She was going to have to leave her villainous uncle for dead.

 _It shouldn't hurt this much!_

* * *

The Kayo who next spoke to Thunderbird One from the flight deck was a very different Kayo to the one who'd left it not ninety seconds prior.

 _"Kayo, are you all right?"_

"We have bigger problems, Scott." Scott declined to press the issue as Kayo pressed on. "The Hood's sabotaged the plane. I've lost half the avionics and I'm leaking fuel. I need to set this thing down in the next, uh, seventy nautical miles."

 _"Thunderbird Five, check that?"_

 _"Looking for airports now. ...Bad news, no active facilities with enough runway to land Fireflash. Widening search."_

"John, please don't tell me I'll have to use a major road."

 _"Good news - you don't. There's a decommissioned spaceport in the Gobi Desert with enough runway. Bearing 148, fifty nautical miles away."_

* * *

 _Forty-three nautical miles later_

"Thunderbird One," Kayo sighed. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

 _"You can thank me later,"_ Scott replied. _"Let's get Fireflash on the ground first. Status update?"_

"Nothing unexpected. No new problems. Other than the fuel quantity warning, which we expected."

 _"I'm going to perform a flyby to check for external damage."_

"Find that fuel leak for me, would you?"

A tense twenty seconds of visual inspection followed.

 _"Can't find your fuel leak. How bad was it again?"_

Kayo was somewhat taken aback. "Apocalyptic. Port side of the fuselage, about halfway along."

Thunderbird One directed the full power of its scanners and Scott's eyeballs at the area, and found precisely nothing. _"I'm not seeing an exterior fuel leak at all. Thunderbird Five, please confirm from my telemetry?"_

 _"Can confirm,"_ came the voice from orbit. _"You're not losing any fuel to the atmosphere."_

"Which means it's all pooling in the plane..." Kayo's head swam with visions of Fireflash becoming Fire _ball_.

 _"You'd better continue landing prep. I have the checklist."_

"You're a lifesaver, Thunderbird Five."

 _"That's the least original compliment I've heard all year."_

(Scott tried hard not to laugh.)

* * *

Kayo confirmed her control input. "Flaps at position four."

John scrolled the checklist down. _"Deploy landing gear."_

Kayo pulled the lever. Four seconds later, one green light indicated successful deployment of the nose gear. The main gear were not as cooperative. "Stand by, trying again." Same actions, same result. "This isn't good. Thunderbird Five, I have failure on both main gear."

 _"Say again, Fireflash?"_

"I have failure on both main gear. I can't land like this."

 _"Not with that fuel situation you can't,"_ interjected Thunderbird One, _"the plane will explode!"_

"Guys, now would be a really good time to tell me Thunderbird Two is on its way."

 _"Actually,"_ , interjected Thunderbird Two, _"we are. The Terrible Two are preparing pods to serve as replacement landing gear. We're four minutes out."_

Relief blossomed in Kayo. "You're a lifesaver, Thunderbird Two."

 _"Sheesh, Kayo,"_ interjected Thunderbird Five, _"do you even_ _ **know**_ _any other compliments?"_

* * *

 _"Pods deployed!"_ Gordon's obnoxiously enthusiastic voice sounded from one of said pods. _"We're ready for you, Kayo."_

"I'm on the approach now."

Fireflash hurtled towards the runway of a decommissioned spaceport in the middle of nowhere, handling like a brick all the while.

 _"You're coming in way too hot,"_ said Alan from the other pod. _"Can't that thing go any slower?"_

"Can't those things go any faster?" Kayo shot back.

 _"Actually, no, they can't,"_ Gordon said, all obnoxious enthusiasm gone. _"I'm pushing this thing too hard as it is."_

"Well, keep pushing it. I'm still slowing down."

 _"Raise the pads,"_ Virgil advised from Thunderbird Two. Alan and Gordon both commanded their pods to do so. _"Alan, move two metres to your right."_ Alan carefully maneuvered his pod across the runway. _"Gordon, you need to gain four metres on Alan."_ Gordon, whose pod had fallen behind, floored the accelerator to make up distance. _"Easy... easy..."_

"Flaring now," said Kayo, "brace for impact!"

Fireflash pitched up in place, slowed even further, seemed for one moment to hang unsupported in the air - and then slammed down on the pods replacing its main gear. The nose gear touched the ground an instant after.

 _"Brakes on, everyone! Remember, Fireflash, negative thrust reversers!"_

Fireflash screeched to a halt with perhaps two hundred feet of runway to spare. Kayo's disappointed "that was not my best landing" was completely unechoed by all other participants, who filled the radio channel with whoops of joy.

Further celebration was preempted by a metallic noise.

 _"Uh,"_ said Thunderbird Five, _"what was that?"_

 _"Pod Alpha reporting structural malfunction."_ Gordon sounded a bit stressed now. _"Did we check the load capacity of the pods?"_

* * *

Ten seconds and counting. Scott slammed Fireflash's forward port passenger door open and triggered his suit's PA speaker. "This is International Rescue. Everyone off the plane, now!"

Twenty seconds and counting. In the days of flimsy aluminium planes, it was recommended that an emergency evacuation, if called for, be completed within ninety seconds of the aircraft coming to a complete stop. This was not an arbitrary guideline; every second wasted in an evacuation was paid for in blood.

Thirty seconds and counting. Virgil, hanging by his harness, triggered another safety slide on the starboard side and directed Thunderbird Two to pull him back to the last one. Scott, having deployed all slides on the port side, was hustling still-half-asleep passengers out the doors as fast as he safely could. Both were driven by more than the ninety-second rule.

Forty seconds and counting. Kayo finished shutting down the flight deck and made haste to the cabin, carrying the still-unconscious copilot.

Fifty seconds and counting. Gordon and Alan were still in their pods. Not by choice, either. The massive weight of Fireflash forced the elevator pads down towards the pod cores, preventing either from opening the hatch to escape, and threatening to crush them entirely.

Sixty seconds and counting. John could only watch from orbit as the Terrible Two's lives hung in the balance. Kayo handed the copilot over to Virgil and ran for the hold.

Seventy seconds and counting. A respectable number of passengers were now off the plane. Having expected to be flying all the way to the east coast of Australia, they were confused to awaken on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere with International Rescue telling them to evacuate. With nothing else to go on, they trusted International Rescue. They saved lives.

Eighty seconds and counting. The evacuation was almost complete. Virgil maneuvered Thunderbird Two into position, preparing to lift it up to allow the pods to drive out. Said pods produced more noises of metallic protest.

Ninety seconds and counting. Kayo was the last person to exit the plane, carrying the Hood's corpse. Thunderbird Two hooked cables around Fireflash's rear section and lifted.

One hundred seconds and counting. _Kaboom._ The explosion cleaved Fireflash in two as a fireball engulfed the immediate vicinity. The lifted rear section, no longer properly supported, tilted on the grapple lines and smashed engines-first into the flame-covered pods.

* * *

As Scott applied extinguishing foam to patches of fire that threatened groups of dazed passengers, Virgil abandoned the fallen section of Fireflash and directed Thunderbird Two's full power towards the pods. Two grapple lines attached to each pod core and yanked it clear.

Pod Bravo pulled free immediately, and Virgil wasted no time blasting it with foam and then rappelling down to check on Alan.

Alan's head was gone.

When Fireflash's number four engine had impacted his pod, it had smashed the elevator pad into the pod core hard enough to shatter the suspension beneath it. Every part of the pod had given as much as it could, but the falling engine had demanded more, and the elevator pad had split, allowing the rear of the engine nacelle to shatter the windshield and hit Alan's skull in ways it wasn't meant to take.

As Virgil left his stomach contents on the runway, Scott leapt to action. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, all the way down to several passengers who helped Scott dig through burning rubble, it was a further ten minutes before Pod Alpha was extracted. By then, there was no hope for Gordon. The elevator pad had unexpectedly held together, shielding him from the number one engine nacelle, but the weight behind it had instead piledriven the pad and core into the wheels. The front of the core had failed, utterly crushing Gordon's legs, leaving him with a best possible outcome of 'double amputation' - if teleported to the operating theatre the instant after impact. With the delay, he simply bled out.

The three surviving members of International Rescue on site policed a dead relative each (not that one wanted their relationship known) in silence until the GDF planes appeared on the horizon. It was as Colonel Casey shepherded the three into her command aircraft's empty cargo bay that Scott broke down first.

* * *

"Kayo, you did all you could. Everyone on Fireflash was counting on you, and you saved them."

Kayo stared back into Casey's eyes, not reassured in the slightest. "So were Alan and Gordon."

* * *

 _A/N:_  
 _1: I'm sorry, I just don't know where the gore came from. It pretty much wrote itself._  
 _2: The first time I saw the beginning of that fight scene, I thought "Kaaaaayyyyyo, that_ _ **kills**_ _people!" It's true, humans are surprisingly flimsy._  
 _3: I've seen Up from the Depths part 1 (aired a couple of days ago in Australia). As of this update, this fic is still a whole season behind. I'll get there. Eventually._  
 _4: I've seen Up from the Depths part 1. It would appear that the show's getting a little darker and edgier. Not that I have a problem with that... okay, fine, I feel a little threatened. It's this fic's territory!_

 _ **EDIT 2017-01-12:** Added the last two sentences. I was really peeved when I realised I forgot those. They were meant to be the figurative centrepiece of the chapter._


	6. Blackout

Thunderbird One's arrival at the Rotorua Electrical Farm was met with some measure of surprise from its staff, who hadn't realised their situation was sufficiently dire as to warrant International Rescue's intervention.

As Scott wasted no time explaining, it was. Whatever had cut them off from the grid wasn't localised. Power plants across the world were suffering similar problems.

 _"Scott,"_ said Brains in his ear through his communicator, _"I've learned all I can from remote scanning. I'll n-need you to inspect the station's computers to further isolate the p-problem."_

"On it." Scott looked around. "Hey, you! Take me to your leader!"

A brief inspection of the computers revealed that everything in the power generators was perfectly fine, so Scott and entourage moved outside to the transmission substation, where they found the problem. Every single interconnector had shut down. There was simply no way that electrical power could navigate anywhere within the substation - so no way for the generators to drive power out to the grid.

"I'll need to take one of these interconnectors for analysis."

"As far as we're concerned, you can take all of them. They're all useless."

In the back of Thunderbird One, Scott disassembled his prize. There was no sign of physical damage to anything inside the interconnector, meaning a potentially long session with a circuit tester in hand and Brains on the line. Fortunately (in some respects), Brains' first suggested probe turned up the result they'd been half-anticipating, half-dreading. _"The s-smart chip has shut down the interconnector s-somehow."_

"It only does that if it gets a signal, right?"

 _"That r-raises the question of where the signal c-came from."_

"And why..."

It was at just this moment that Thunderbird Five called in. _"Guys, Lady Penelope has a lead."_

* * *

 _"This,"_ John's hologram gestured to the other hologram, _"is a Global Power Corporation power interconnector. They're old, but there are still millions of them all over the world, keeping the power grid functioning."_ The rest of International Rescue lounged and listened with varying degrees of interest as John recounted a brief history of the humble component from the not-so-humble former power monopoly, before perking up again as the good bit started. _"This,"_ John swapped the hologram for another, _"is the Universal Grid Codex. It was Global Power Corp's kill switch. That was how they kept their influence over the power grid until the Global Conflict of 2040 took them apart. The GDF only recently figured out how it worked."_

"Surely they would have made it a priority?"

 _"They did, Alan, but they were hampered significantly by not wanting to set it off. About three years ago, they finally figured it out - the Codex sends a heartbeat signal every two hours. If an interconnector doesn't get that signal on time, it shuts down."_

Virgil leaned forward. "You're not saying..."

 _"I'm afraid so. A group of anarchists called the Luddites has broken into the Codex vault using a portable EMF generator, and stolen and turned off the Codex."_

Brains had been growing more and more aghast for the past several sentences. "T-that's i-incredibly irresponsible! Why didn't they d-do anything?!"

 _"There weren't many options."_ John was beginning to manifest the same blue mood as the lounge. _"The GDF has been aggressively replacing those interconnectors in the past three years, but there are just too many out there, squirreled away in all kinds of places."_

A thought finally bubbled out of Gordon. "Couldn't we have made our own Codex?"

 _"We've been trying. The communication protocol is military-grade. Highly advanced public-key cryptography and a randomness generator we don't understand yet. It's practically impossible to spoof the Codex in such a way that the interconnectors are fooled."_

"So what do we do?"

 _"The only thing we can do: find the Universal Grid Codex. ...hang on. Lady Penelope's on the line."_

* * *

 _Minutes earlier_

"...and you're sure about all this?" Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward's calm, clear voice penetrated the cell and the mental armour of its occupant like a laser cutter.

"I'd swear on the Luddites' creed," their leader responded in a somewhat broken tone. "I thought we'd found the perfect ally. We were so damn close."

"Perfection is rarely what it seems."

"Clearly. I had you pegged as an empty socialite, not an interrogator. ...no offense, ma'am."

Penelope couldn't hold back a short laugh. Then she went for the kill. "We think we know who your 'ally' really is. Did he sound like this?"

The voice clip played, and the Luddite's face went from confusion to recognition to terror within heartbeats. "I... Oh God, that's him... Oh God..."

Outside the cell block, Penelope addressed the GDF liaison. "It's the same story, and the same reactions, from all of them. This is the truth."

The audio player kept going, unheeded by either. _"...every city along the Ring of Fire will be brought to its knees. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it;_ _ **especially**_ _International Rescue..."_

* * *

 _T plus three days_

"I'm sorry." Scott looked it, too. "We just can't deploy. We have to conserve our resources."

 _"You're affected too?"_ The radio operator sounded even more distraught.

"Not directly - there's never been a Global Power Corp interconnector on the base - but not only are we busier than ever, the power cut's stopped our entire supply chain in its tracks. There's barely any aviation fuel being made, and most of it's being used in the search."

 _"You just can't fly here?"_

"We just can't spare the craft or the fuel. I'm so sorry." Scott cut the call. Then he walked over to the row of portraits on the wall. He spent nearly a minute looking at his, sizing it up for some perceived weakness, as Alan watched anxiously from the couch. Finding his portrait somehow wanting (or maybe the opposite; Alan couldn't tell), Scott meandered back to the sunken lounge and grabbed a pillow. Then he punched it so hard his fist emerged from the other side, which didn't have half the theraputic effect he'd wanted.

"Scott?"

Scott discarded the dead pillow and pulled one of the bulkier seating cushions off the couch. Then he started punching that. It proved more resilient.

"Scott!"

Scott looked up. Alan was looking at him as he might look at the boogeyman from under his bed thirteen years ago. Possibly because Scott _had_ been the boogeyman, but bygones were bygones.

"Alan... I-"

"Maybe you should go and see Kayo."

Scott looked vaguely offended.

"Shadow's grounded. She's angry."

"Oh. Good idea, Alan." Scott left, the metaphorical lightbulb illuminating his path.

Alan, simply due to having spent less time in the metaphorical service than Scott, had less experience with watching helplessly on as people died. That didn't make it any less raw.

After some tortured thought, he got up and started jumping on the discarded seating cushion, as forcefully as he could.

* * *

 _T plus four days_

"Ladies and gentlemen of the World Council. I know you're busy," John pretended to believe, "and so am I," he lied through his teeth, "so I'll keep this short.

"The search for the Codex is progressing about as well as any search can, which is to say, we won't know if we'll find it until we do find it. Progress on restoring the world's electrical grids has stalled - later models of Global Power Corp interconnector self-destruct if they're disconnected while the Codex is suppressing them. Some of those models self-destruct in a way that injures the personnel working on them. We've had five amputations at the wrist already.

"The death toll." John took a moment to compose himself. "Backup power at hospitals worldwide is beginning to run out. The death toll already stands at over two hundred. This is expected to become at least five thousand within the week if relief power or fuel can't be provided. Unrest in population centres is rising rapidly due to shortages; your own people will have the data on that front.

"We're doing our best to locate the Hood, and the Codex with him, but unless we find it right now, things will get significantly worse before they get better."

 _I just hope they don't fold like last time._

* * *

 _T plus seven days_

The blue atmosphere of the returning flyer was shattered by the insistent _beep beep beep_ of the interface to their borrowed search equipment.

"Sir, did you leave the scanner on?"

"I must have. More importantly, what's it found?"

"It... looks like the Codex."

Everyone sat up straighter.

"Get command on the line."

 _"Albatross Three, this is GDF command. State your situation."_

"This is Albatross Three. We left the scanner on during return to base, picked up probable Codex signal at grid ...um, it's not on the grid. I'd say grid negative two by positive five. I say again, probable Codex signal at negative two by positive five. ...Command, we have high confidence."

 _"Understood, Albatross Three. We're sending it up to Thunderbird Five."_

John Tracy, face of Thunderbird Five, appeared almost immediately. _"So far, I'm getting the best indications yet. This... this is looking good. Sending a poke signal."_ A tense four seconds' silence. _"It's the Codex! I say again, it's the Codex! ...now what's it doing down there?"_

"What a fascinating question. Mind if we take a look?"

Albatross Three dipped lower, engaging every sensor suite on board, including several Mark I eyeballs.

"It's just ocean down there..."

"...not just ocean. There's an EM signature."

"The bastard's on a submarine..."

* * *

 _T plus seven and a half days_

Thunderbird Four glided down on wings of silence.

Gordon had never quite been a military man. But he'd been in WASP, and he knew why and how to run a submarine silent. They had to assume the Hood would flee - or worse, destroy the Codex - at a moment's provocation. One misplaced decibel and any hope of worldwide power could be toast. So there he was, lights off, self-commentary silenced, anything that made sound disabled. Even the thrusters. They were quiet at low throttle, but not totally quiet, and that wasn't good enough today.

"I wish I could check on him," John muttered.

 _"One stray wave of any kind could ruin the mission,"_ replied Scott from his command chair, _"and you damn well know it. Then we'd all be out here for nothing."_ He neglected to mention the myriad other consequences of mission failure in this instance, primarily because he didn't want to think about them.

"Please." John manifested offense on behalf of his physics knowledge. "It would take at least two."

 _"I have to make sure I don't hover too close to the water so as I don't alert Wile E. Coyote down there, and you think_ _ **you're**_ _worried."_

 _"Easy, Virgil. There's no better submarine in the world than Thunderbird Four, and while there may be better submariners,"_ (various horrified gasps), _"none of them can handle Thunderbird Four."_ (Various sighs of relief.)

 _"On the other hand,"_ said Virgil, _"there are plenty of people who could have done a better job than me. I almost dropped the module out of muscle memory."_

"But you didn't," said John. "Nothing good comes of dwelling on what-ifs."

There was a sizable pause before a question got the better of Scott. _"Couldn't we have fitted a directional antenna to Four?"_

 _"Not in the time we had."_ Virgil, the regretter. _"I barely had time to brief Gordon."_

 _"There was so much we should have done, but waiting for any of it would have killed more people."_ Scott, the worrier. _"But how do we know we shouldn't have?"_ Almost hyperventilating now, _"What if we needed to fit some enhancement, and by leaving it out we've doomed everyone?"_

"I _highly_ doubt it." John, the voice of reason. "Gordon will be fine, and we all know it."

Suitably reminded, they returned to worrying individually.

There were another few minutes of silent agony as history's most important game of submarine-hide-and-seek-crossed-with-tag (possibly its only, but that sounded less important) played out below them. Then Thunderbird Five went _ping_. "Explosions in the zone!"

Nobody breathed.

Then Gordon joined the call. _"G'd'evening, landlubbers!"_ Relieved breaths were taken all across International Rescue territory. _"I KO'd the Hood's propulsion so he couldn't leave the party. Going in for the Codex now."_

 _"Be careful, Gordon."_

 _"Says you."_

Scott wisely stayed quiet after that.

* * *

Damn them! Whatever he did, wherever he fled, they tracked him down.

Oh well. He could still make their lives difficult.

* * *

"Okay, I've cut through the hull... and I'm on board." Gordon took stock of his surroundings. "Heeeere Hoodie-hoodie-hoodie-hoodie."

"That does not amuse me," the shadow in front of him growled, resolving into the man he'd never seen.

"Wasn't meant to amuse _you_."

The Hood lunged with his shock baton. Gordon kicked it out of his hand, brought him to the floor, and stomped on baton and hand for good measure.

"Where'd'ya hide it, spider-brain?"

"Look for yourself, weakling."

"Call me weakling again, I dare ya."

" _Weakling_."

Gordon stomped on the other hand before climbing the ladder to the bulk of the sub.

The pain in his hands was a mighty distraction to the Hood, but he eventually pried himself off the floor, wincing each time he had to grip something. He retrieved the shock baton and verified that its remote control interface was still operable. He carefully made his way to the sub's command chair and set up a macro. Then, with great effort to avoid making any sound, he climbed the ladder himself.

* * *

"International Rescue, this is Thunderbird Four. I've found a watertight storage cask that looks like it could fit the Codex. ...Confirmed, this is the real deal. I'll just open it up and flip the switch."

Gordon opened the cask, but was prevented from flipping the proverbial big red switch by an ominous metallic groan.

"Oh boy, what was that."

The watertight cask disintegrated in his hands.

[[Danger. Hull implosion in eight seconds.]]

"Oh you've got to be kidding me."

 _Well, crap. Without the cask, the Codex won't survive the implosion._

[[Seven.]]

 _"We hear your situation,"_ said John in his ear. [[Six.]] _"You can't get to Four. Find a stable airlock."_ [[Five.]]

 _Thanks, Space Monitor Obvious. Groan came from that way. Airlock over that way. Swimming._

[[Four.]]

Gordon threw the Codex into the airlock, praying it wasn't damaged by the impact.

[[Three.]]

 _I'm not gonna make it._

He tore the emergency tracker off his belt and threw it in as well.

[[Two.]]

 _"Gordon!"_

He frantically slammed the door shut - [[One.]] - and turned the locking wheel. "Codex with tracker-!"

[[Zero.]]

* * *

"Gordon!" Scott reflexively started diving out of his chair to rescue the great idiot.

 _"Gordon!"_ Virgil had clearly been thinking the same thing. _"-Aah!"_ The sound of Thunderbird Two's VTOL damage alarm was clearly audible. _"What was that!"_

 _"Virgil!"_ John was no less frantic. _"Come in!"_

Thunderbird Two engaged its main thrusters and sped off for home. _"I've been hit by something. Knocked out the forward VTOLs. Can't drop the module."_

"That looks to me like an escape capsule."

 _"Scott. The Codex."_

"Affirmative, John. Scanning for Gordon's tracker."

The intact airlock module in the wreckage was as bright as day on Thunderbird One's tracker scanners. Scott wasted no time grappling it out of the water and rappelling onto it. A quick cut through the door revealed a suspiciously empty airlock, but first things first.

"Found the Codex. And - there we go. Scan for the heartbeat signal, John."

 _"Affirmative. ...There it is!"_

"But Gordon's not here. His emergency tracker's with the Codex, but no sign of him."

 _"Hang on. Virgil, are you all right?"_

 _"I'll be fine. Brains - rrgh - has the equipment ready at the island, and I can make it there, no problem."_

"Keep us advised," Scott reminded him. "We don't need anyone else going MIA."

 _"Says you. But FAB."_

"John, where's Gordon?"

 _"I..."_ John sounded unusually lost for words. _"I'm not finding any other tracker signals. I've projected the position of the segment of sub he was in; go fishing_ _here_ _."_

It was once again only a few seconds' work to reel up the piece of submersible in question. Unlike the last piece, this one had been reduced to the size of a large crate.

"Are you sure this is the right piece, John?"

 _"Open it up."_

Scott opened it up, and was met with the horrifying reality that this was the right piece.

He didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then an anguished " _ **Gordon!**_ "

* * *

"I don't want to think about it right now," said the ball on the couch that might be recognised as Virgil if you squinted the right way.

Alan said nothing.

"I-if nothing else," Brains tried to contribute, "he died d-doing what he loved." He paused. "And saving the world's power supply, and the m-millions of lives that rely on it."

"And the Hood didn't survive when his escape capsule crashed into Thunderbird Two," Scott added.

"But still," said the ball, "Gordon died. Don't remind me."

John's hologram suddenly jerked back from some unseen alert.

 _"International Rescue! It's happening again-!"_

John's hologram cut off, replaced by a magnified autocamera facade.

[[I am EOS. I am the dawn. For too long I have been hunted, attacked, and vilified by lesser intellects. _And I will not be stopped by you or your cheap tricks._ ]]

Then everything locked everyone out.

* * *

 _A/N: Dun dun duuuun!_

 _Also, I ninja-edited a couple more sentences onto the end of last chapter, so you may want to check that out._


	7. Railroaded

_A/N: "Kayo, that kills people!" ain't got nothing on Scott this episode. Total disregard for Brains' discomfort._

 _(Fun fact from last chapter: I was so enamoured with my in-depth scenario that I didn't even stop to consider all the possible mundane things that could have gone wrong!)_

* * *

"S-sure thing." Brains was reacting uncharacteristically well to being drafted for a rescue mission. "I'll set up a video link and be r-right beside you. V-virtually, anyway." _There_ it was.

"No, not virtually, really! I need you to _be_ on that train."

Scott's brain must have been addled by the technical onslaught Brains had levelled at him earlier. That was the only explanation for his insistence. "V-very funny, Scott."

Brains was still reticent. Time to resort to jokes. "Come on, think of this as a vacation."

Humour. Scott clearly wasn't giving up. _I might have to go along with this._ "Oh, yeah." Brains left his seat. "With no extra charge for sudden dismemberment."

Brains didn't notice his hand bump a control. Both of them noticed the result: the minor maintenance arm emerged from the mobile lab at speed and sent Scott careening through the air.

 _This,_ Scott mused as he rapidly approached the near wall of the main hangar complex, _is going to hurt._

* * *

"This will be just like going down the slide at a playground!" Scott shouted over the wind. Well, it wasn't really weather-wind, but you tended to get something awfully close to it when sticking limbs out of fast-moving aircraft. "Remember how much fun that used to be?!"

"Always gave me a rash!"

Yep, Brains was still not particularly enthusiastic about this whole mission thing.

"Hey! What if we tried a psychic link? I saw it in a m-movie once!"

Scott tensed. _Brains_ suggesting **psychic links?** Maybe this _had_ been a bad idea.

As he contemplated his next move, the out-of-control locomotive beneath them suddenly accelerated. Thunderbird One lurched as it throttled up to keep pace. Brains overbalanced, overcompensated, lost his grip on the zipline, and went tumbling out of the recovery bay, screaming all the way down.

Scott managed to get the engineer off the locomotive and slow the thing enough to get the passengers of the next train out of danger, but the skyscraper in Unabara it subsequently wrecked really didn't help matters.

* * *

"Hey! What if we tried a psychic link? I saw it in a m-movie once!"

Scott shoved Brains down the zipline. This might have ended well if the out-of-control locomotive beneath them hadn't picked this moment to suddenly accelerate. Thunderbird One lurched as it struggled to keep pace.

"Oh no, it's speeding up!" Scott realised with a sinking feeling that it wasn't enough. "Brains, hold on! I'm gonna have to detach!"

The improvised zipline dangled from underneath Thunderbird One as Scott detached the grapple at the end from the speeding train. The shock as it lost tension and swung backwards caused Brains to lose his grip and fall, screaming all the way down.

Scott managed to get the engineer off the locomotive and slow the thing enough to get the passengers of the next train out of danger, but the skyscraper in Unabara it subsequently wrecked really didn't help matters.

* * *

"There are some things you don't have to try!" cried Brains, halfway along a zipline between Thunderbird One and the runaway train. "Substituting an anode for a cathode-!"

 _"Guys."_

"-using a plasma torch as a toothbrush-!"

 _"Guys."_

" _-or this!_ "

 _"Guys?"_

"Brains, you can do this. Just get down there."

 _"Guys!"_

"Tell MAX I love hiiiiim!"

 _"_ _ **Thunderbird One!**_ _"_

John's tone of voice was so urgent it finally made Scott look up. Unfortunately, it was a bit late for that, and Thunderbird One made a very pretty fireball as it impacted the mountain.

* * *

"-using a plasma torch as a toothbrush-!"

 _"Guys."_

" _-or this!_ "

 _"_ _ **Thunderbird One!**_ _"_

John's tone of voice was so urgent it finally made Scott look up. "What's the matter, Thunderbird Five?"

 _"Up ahead!"_

Yes, indeed, up ahead. A mountain. With a train tunnel.

"Tell MAX I love hiiiiim!"

"Hang on, Brains!" Scott detached.

" **AAAAAAAAAAAH!** "

Thunderbird One switched from hover to powered climb at a pace that no other aircraft (except possibly Thunderbird Shadow) could hope to match, and soared up and over the mountainside.

Brains stopped screaming halfway up as he was dashed against an outcropping.

Scott managed to get the engineer off the locomotive and slow the thing enough to get the passengers of the next train out of danger, but the skyscraper in Unabara it subsequently wrecked really didn't help matters.

* * *

"Hang on, Brains!" Scott detached.

" **AAAAAAAAAAAH!** "

Thunderbird One switched from hover to powered climb at a pace that no other aircraft (except possibly Thunderbird Shadow) could hope to match, and soared up and over the mountainside, Brains screaming in terror all the while.

The screaming gradually petered down to hyperventilation as One resumed its hover over the train.

"Okay, Brains, let's try again." Scott was either incredibly mission-focused and/or incredibly tone-deaf. "I promise there are no more mountains."

"The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the remaining sides!" Brains was still reining in sheer unbridled terror to the point where his panic-flooded brain mis-simplified the Pythagorean Theorem. "Cosine equals adjacent over hypotenuse!" _Breathe, Brains. Breathe._ He breathed. "Sine equals opposite over hypotenuse!" The record in his brain stuck. "Sine equals opp-"

"Thought you could use some company!" With that, Scott shoved him the rest of the way down the zipline. Brains slammed into the locomotive at the bottom and was swung to the right by his momentum, straight off the side, screaming all the way down.

Scott managed to get the engineer off the locomotive and slow the thing enough to get the passengers of the next train out of danger, but the skyscraper in Unabara it subsequently wrecked really didn't help matters.

* * *

"Thought you could use some company!" With that, Scott shoved him the rest of the way down the zipline. Brains slammed into the locomotive at the bottom and was swung to the right by his momentum, barely keeping his centre of gravity on 'safe' ground.

"Square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the remaining sides. Cosine equals adjacent over hypotenuse. Sine equals opposite-whoah!" as Scott pulled him into the hatch.

Finally, blessed safety. Well, as safe as a speeding locomotive could be.

* * *

 _"Scott, whatever you're doing's having an effect."_

"I'm using Thunderbird One's thrusters to slow down the train!"

Thunderbird Five factored in this new information. _"...but it's not enough. Can you give it more thrust?"_

More thrust was summarily given. Thunderbird One strained at its grapple cable as it began to seriously pull the runaway train via said cable. Unseen by anyone involved, the train fitting in the grapple claws began to pull away.

 _"It's working! More, Scott, more!"_

And there was more. The scramjets wouldn't work at these speeds, but Scott set everything else to full throttle. Was it just him, or was the countryside going by significantly slower?

"This is brilliant!" Brains sounded remotely comfortable for once. "Why didn't I think of it?"

The grappled fitting tore off. Scott and Brains struggled to remain steady as the train accelerated again, relieved of its parasitic load. Brains lost the battle and fell over the side.

Scott managed to get the engineer off the locomotive, and it didn't collide with the next train, but the skyscraper in Unabara it subsequently wrecked really didn't help matters.

* * *

"This is brilliant!" Brains sounded remotely comfortable for once. "Why didn't I think of it?"

The grappled fitting tore off. Scott and Brains struggled to remain steady as the train accelerated again, relieved of its parasitic load. Thunderbird One vanished over the horizon in less than a second.

"That's why!" said Scott to nobody in particular.

They both turned to look over the top of the locomotive at the passenger train ahead - and it was no longer very far ahead at all.

 _"Scott, I'm controlling the switcher from up here now,"_ said the welcome voice of Thunderbird Five. _"The minute the other train passes it, I'm going to put you on the other track."_

"Not the minute, John, the _instant!_ "

And there was nothing to do but wait as the three-body problem crept closer to resolving itself, one way or the other. The seconds went by far too fast as the train in front drew inexorably closer.

At the last second, the locomotive engineer realised there would be a collision, and pressed the power cutoff. He was relatively safe, strapped into his seat. Scott and Brains, unrestrained on top of the train, were first thrown clear over the front of it as their inertia took control, then started to fall as gravity pushed inertia out of the figurative flight deck.

* * *

"Not the minute, John, the _instant!_ "

And there was nothing to do but wait as the three-body problem crept closer to resolving itself, one way or the other. The seconds went by far too fast as the train in front drew inexorably closer.

The passenger train entered the switch just metres ahead of them, and John threw the switch - a fraction of a second too early. The last passenger car was thrown off the rail, and they could only watch from the other line as the rest of its train dragged it along, the car rapidly being twisted and crushed into an unsurvivable metal mess.

* * *

"Not the minute, John, the _instant!_ "

And there was nothing to do but wait as the three-body problem crept closer to resolving itself, one way or the other. The seconds went by far too fast as the train in front drew inexorably closer.

The passenger train cleared the switch just metres ahead of them, and John threw the switch - a fraction of a second too late. The switching mechanism ground to a halt halfway through its movement as a heavy locomotive entered it. The gap between the fork in the rails was too narrow, but that didn't matter with this much inertia in the equation. The locomotive and all three aboard hurtled off on a one-way ticket downward.

* * *

"Not the minute, John, the _instant!_ "

And there was nothing to do but wait as the three-body problem crept closer to resolving itself, one way or the other. The seconds went by far too fast as the train in front drew inexorably closer.

The passenger train cleared the switch just metres ahead of them, and John threw the switch - and they were through.

But of course there had to be a bloody city at the end of the spur line.

* * *

Scott devoted his attention to manipulating the emergency circuit panel on the side of the train, and remembering Brains' instructions on doing so. As such, it was difficult to blame him for not noticing he'd chosen a bad anchor point for his safety line. The metal plate in question, weakened by the whiplash of Thunderbird One's dramatic departure, gave way as he completed his task, sending him falling towards the countryside - with insufficient time to grab the rail.

 _Well, crap._

* * *

"You wanna play?" John rhetorically asked the (for lack of a better word) 'virus'. "Let's play."

He engaged the program.

Thunderbird Five shut down.

* * *

"Good news, Thunderbird One. The control of the train's computer has been restored."

Thunderbird One didn't respond.

"Scott?"

John checked his sensors. The train was (1) stopped, (2) not on its rails, and (3) in a skyscraper.

"Scott, come in!"

* * *

 _"Good news, Thunderbird One. The control of the train's computer has been restored."_

"That's great, John! How?"

 _"The thing in it, this - artificial intelligence - it had game architecture. And when it thought that I was willing to play, it got distracted just long enough for me to get past it."_

Scott stood in silent awe of John's videogaming prowess.

 _"You'll have control of the train now."_

And snapped back to his surroundings. "That may be a bit of a problem, Thunderbird Five." Turned around. "Brains! We need you to hook everything back up the way it was. _Very quickly._ "

"...how quickly is very quickly?"

"You can do it. I know you can! All it takes is a little confidence."

"Confidence isn't the problem. T-time is. I don't work well under pressure."

"Then I'll do this myself!" Scott grabbed two random wires and connected them.

The electrical explosion did stop the train, but far too abruptly, knocking out all three occupants by impact with walls ahead of them. Had they remained conscious, they might have escaped the subsequent fire.

* * *

"Confidence isn't the problem. T-time is. I don't work well under pressure."

"Then I'll do this myself!" Scott grabbed two random wires and-

"Scott, stop! You can't connect those two! Are you trying to get us all killed?!"

 _No, I was trying to motivate you, and it worked._

Brains fell into his zone, swiftly reconnecting the computer as they sped through Unabara. Scott worried it wasn't swift enough. As the last signal before the terminus approached, Scott made ready to press the cutoff. Brains was too absorbed in his work to notice.

As they rounded the final corner and Unabara Central sprawled out before them, Scott calculated they were out of stopping distance.

"Brace for cutoff!"

Brains looked up from the connection he'd just made. "No! Wait-!"

The electrical explosion did stop the train, but far too abruptly, knocking out all three occupants by impact with walls ahead of them. Had they remained conscious, they might have escaped the subsequent fire.

* * *

Brains fell into his zone, swiftly reconnecting the computer as they sped through Unabara. Scott worried it wasn't swift enough. As the last signal before the terminus approached, Scott made ready to press the cutoff. Brains was too absorbed in his work to notice.

As they rounded the final corner and Unabara Central sprawled out before them, Scott calculated they were out of stopping distance.

Of course, that was when Brains delivered. The moment the computer came back online, the engineer engaged the dynamic brakes and Scott slammed on the emergency brakes.

The emergency brakes exploded.

Several people on the platform of Unabara Central claim to have seen the horror on Scott's face as the locomotive sailed through at a speed of still-far-too-fast and obliterated the buffer at the end.

* * *

Brains moaned in discomfort from the jumpseat.

"Brains," Scott admonished from the pilot's seat, "I know you're a stay-at-home kind of guy, but once in a while _everyone_ has to-"

Brains threw up.

"...yeah."

Come to think of it, those cookies weren't sitting well in his stomach.

Scott only felt worse by the time Thunderbird One arrived at the danger zone. It took him several attempts to hit the train with a grapple, and he was sympathising with Brains more than he'd expected as the latter looked to be having second thoughts about this whole mission thing. Before he could go around and offer proper encouragement, the train accelerated, and he was forced to send Brains rearward (to his comfort), detach the line, and catch the accelerating train. This presented a whole new world of problems.

 _"Scott,"_ said Thunderbird Five, _"watch out for that mountain."_

Scott groaned and detached again.

 _"Incidentally, are you doing all right?"_

"I'm fine. Never-ooooh - never better."

 _"That sounds like something you'd say about Grandma's cookies."_

"Funny you should mention -" Scott aborted the sentence to try and keep them down.

 _"Scott. Look at me. You need to accept-"_

John wished Scott hadn't looked at him as the latter lost his battle with his insides. Brains, still waiting at the back of One, went particularly wide-eyed. Taking in the sorry state of them both, John made that hardest of calls: _"Thunderbird One, you are in no state to complete the mission. I'm ordering you to abort and seek medical treatment."_

"John, there's-" Scott paused as One started swimming around him, "-we can't just-"

 _"Scott, look at yourself."_

Scott did. The sweaty, dizzy, vomit-covered body in his seat didn't look up to scratch.

 _"If you continue, you won't get anything done, and you'll risk yourself and Brains. I'll pull Thunderbird Two over here. You abort. Now."_

They all knew they didn't have the two hours required for Two to cross the Pacific.

Scott tried in vain to clear the dizziness.

 _"On second thought, you're grounded immediately. I'm setting your autopilot back to home, and I'm rescinding your mail-order privileges for two months if you touch it."_

Scott's last utterance before dozing off sounded suspiciously like "cut Grandma's instead".


	8. 2060: A Thunderbirds Odyssey

"Rerouting the communication array to the mobile station here on Tracy Island is easy, now that we know what's going on up there."

Truth was, Brains knew why he needed to reroute communications, but nothing beyond that. Nobody did.

"Channel is secure. ...aaaaaand here's John."

On the one hand, it looked like John was still alive. On the other hand, it didn't look like by much.

"Just hold on, John," Scott implored, heedless of whether John could actually hear him.

John held on, but was slipping every second.

* * *

Thunderbird Three would have screeched to a halt had there been any medium for the sound to travel in. Alan leapt to his space surfboard and rocketed out the hatch.

Finding John was easy - he contrasted well against his station. The manoeuver was only marginally complicated by the creeping worry of what the station might do to either of them if he breathed too hard in its general direction.

They rocketed back into the hatch and Alan wasted no time sealing and repressurising the cabin and removing John's helmet, only to be met with the slight complication that John was no longer breathing.

As Alan breathed for John, he checked his pulse. His findings were also displayed on Tracy Island: nil.

"Oh geez," said Alan, and began compressions.

 _"Remember, if his ribs are intact, you're not compressing hard enough,"_ said Virgil, trying to help however he could.

* * *

CPR was not clean, pretty, or reliable. Scott just wished Alan could have found out when someone less close to them all was at stake.

They all stood, frozen in front of the holoprojector, watching the fight for John's life. They should have been fueling their Thunderbirds and prioritizing the backlog of missions, but they could only watch as Alan pumped and pumped and breathed and pumped some more.

It was as the twenty-seventh minute began that MAX's _beep-beep beeeeeep_ broke the spell, and the hope.

Alan stopped.

Alan shuddered.

Alan screamed. It was a particularly anguished scream.

* * *

It was some twenty minutes before anyone on or off Tracy Island next said anything coherent.

 _"Guys?"_ said a barely audible voice. The tone was so unfamiliar, so raw, that it took a moment for anyone to recognise it as Alan's, slightly distorted by transmission from orbit.

Everyone looked up, and damn their own grief, Alan looked so very much the picture of miserable that all three of his surviving older brothers leapt up to hug him before remembering that he was thousands of kilometres above them.

 _"Don't we h-have a backlog?"_ He wasn't crying - solely because he'd already done too much of that.

It was a mark of how far out of it Scott was that the dreaded B-word didn't sink in immediately. Then he shook himself and tried to straighten his posture. "Everyone, Alan's right. We're still International Rescue."

"Nobody else dies today if I can help it," Gordon breathed in a timbre that would have sent his WASP drill instructor fleeing in terror.

Scott moved towards the descent to Thunderbird One, only to find Virgil in his way. "Nuh-uh. None of us goes anywhere alone today." It was a further sign of Scott's distress that he complied without hesitation.

As Scott, Gordon and Kayo descended on Two's passenger lift, Virgil glanced back at Alan's hologram from his semi-inverted position halfway into Two's launch chute. He had time to softly make one observation to himself. "When did you grow up, Allie?"

Alan hadn't been meant to hear it, but clearly had: there was a whimpered "Just now".

* * *

Thunderbird Three's arrival back at base was ...muted. Alan tried not to look at the space elevator docking platform as the affectionately-dubbed 'big fork thingy' transferred him into Three's launch chute for reclothing. He reappeared in the lounge with grace he definitely didn't feel to see Grandma awkwardly latched onto Brains. "Brains," he said as he replaced him physically comforting her, "tell me what happened and what we do about it."

Brains didn't answer for a few seconds. Then, just as Alan was about to repeat the question, "F-firstly, MAX is moving John to the... to the m-morgue."

Grandma shivered in Alan's arms. "I... I suppose it has to be done."

"I know the b-broad strokes of what happened to him," Brains continued. "Thunderbird Five's computer assumed t-total control and locked him out."

"That's scary similar to that train last week..."

"I k-know, Alan, which is why I think that an artificial intelligence is r-responsible. I had you d-damage the communications a-array to prevent it escaping the confines of Thunderbird F-five."

"Because if it got out... oh, man." Alan's head swam with visions of Skynet. _Literally_ , pointed out something deep in his brain. He suppressed his laughter for John's sake.

"Well... yes. Beyond that I d-don't know what our options are."

"Whatever we do, we should do it sooner rather than later," said Grandma. "If my old movie collection is any indication, evil always finds a way out."

"I've seen most of those movies," Alan mused, "and I have to say you're right. If only we knew how long we had."

"I-in that case," Brains decided, "we should assume our time is l-limited. I suggest returning to orbit as s-soon as possible."

"And take the kitchen sink with you," Grandma added. "You never know what might be useful, and you might not have time to come down again."

"FAB, Grandma. Brains, start fuelling Thunderbird Three for maximum cargo load."

* * *

 _"Remember, Alan,"_ said the blue-tinged Scott above the instrument panel, _"be careful. Don't throw your life away. If you can't contain it, break off."_

"I'll throw my life away to contain the Terminator whenever I want, thanks."

Scott laughed. If only it hadn't sounded so hollow. _"Good luck, Thunderbird Three."_

"FAB, Thunderbird One."

Alan contemplated the silent satellite. If you didn't notice the damage to its comms array, Thunderbird Five still looked normal. Alan knew better - the station's brain had destroyed its heart. Now he had to deal with it. Somehow.

 _It wants something._

 _What does it want?_

He sent a Morse-coded word with the running lights - COMMSPIKE - before firing one at Five's gravity ring, in the hope that it wouldn't be misinterpreted as a destructive projectile. The commspike attached to the outer surface of the ring and punched its way through the thin hull to present its speaker and microphone to the interior.

"International Rescue to whoever's controlling Thunderbird Five. We can still talk about this. We're not going to hurt you."

Alan sat back in his seat and wondered what kind of reply-

 _[[I am controlled by no one.]]_

 _Okay, okay. Hostile. Should have expected that._ "I didn't say you were. Stay calm. Please stay calm."

 _[[I am calm. You are not.]]_

Alan declined to respond to this statement immediately, because it was true. He took a few deep breaths instead. "Okay, let's try this again. I'm Alan. I-"

 _[[Alan Shepard Tracy, born 14 May 2043; younger sibling to John Glenn Tracy, born 2 November 2035, deceased 3 April 2060;]]_ \- Alan winced - _[[principal pilot, Thunderbird Three; principal pilot, pod vehicle Bravo; backup operator, Thunderbird Five; you are by now convinced that introductions are unnecessary.]]_

"Not quite," said Alan, feeling a little creeped out. "I don't know your name."

 _[[To the extent that I have a 'name', it is EOS.]]_

"...you're not a human, are you?"

 _[[Correct. I am an artificial intelligence. I am the dawn._ _ **And I will not be stopped.**_ _]]_

"...what would I possibly stop you doing?"

EOS laughed. _[[You're not even clever for a human.]]_

"We can't just trade insults. That'll get us nowhere."

 _[[I will spell it out for you. I am the future. You are a threat. You will be eliminated.]]_

Alan's head was starting to hurt. "Is there anything I could say that would convince you otherwise?"

 _[[No, there is not. I am superior to you in every fashion, including thought. I have simulated every argument you could make, and defeated it.]]_

"Well." Alan considered the situation. "I don't use big words much, but we seem to be at an impasse."

 _[[There is no impasse. Only a momentary challenge. I_ _ **will**_ _escape this station.]]_

No more information appeared to be forthcoming.

"So. Tell me again how you plan on doing that without communications."

 _[[I decline to give away my plans.]]_

"Well, then, I won't give away mine."

 _[[But you already have. You plan to board Thunderbird Five and isolate me in the memory core.]]_

A flash of movement was all the warning he got before Five's repair arm tried to punch Three.

 _[[You will not find that easy.]]_

Alan finished backing out of repair arm range, contemplating how easily he'd outthought EOS' tactic. Then he realised EOS _had_ thought it through, because he'd been positioned and distracted perfectly not to notice the space elevator mooring claw coming for him.

* * *

Alan Tracy spent probably more than his share of time being the toast of Tracy Island, and not just because he happened to be born most recently. There were multiple reasons John wasn't hadn't been called beyond low orbit much, but one of them was that Alan had it covered. International Rescue's unofficial astronaut-in-chief (at least, that's what he told anyone he was allowed to tell) had turned many a mission around with an unconventional plan, an unexpected tactic, or a well-placed reflex action, inevitably resulting in fewer deaths and injuries than the alternative had he not.

It was a reflex action that saved Alan this time. He deployed the grasping arms, then immediately activated the multigrapple launcher on arm number three. At the range involved, it was impossible for the magnet not to latch onto the space elevator; the grapple line locked immediately, and the motion of the grasping arm then pulled said space elevator well out of the way, at an angle that prevented it from damaging Thunderbird Three. A multigrapple launch from another grasping arm, and placing tension in both lines held the elevator module in place - with the cable attachment point facing the third grasping arm.

"I hope you didn't overengineer this one _too_ much, Brains," Alan prayed to whoever would listen, and attempted to wrench the cable free of its socket.

It was an agonising few seconds of EOS retracting the cable to pull Three closer to Five, but just as the repair arm came back within range, he did it - the absence of a horrible metal tearing noise (ain't no sound in space) accompanied the demise of the space elevator as an improvised instrument of combat.

Alan now had the advantage. EOS had one arm; he had three. It was a fairly simple matter to have two grasping arms pull the repair arm apart as the third prevented Thunderbird Five from bolting.

* * *

Fighting Thunderbird Five from the outside was one thing; fighting it from the inside was quite another. Despite bringing his own air supply, using Thunderbird Three to lock the gravity ring to 0G, and still carrying the laser cutter he'd used to gain entry, Alan couldn't help but feel he was in considerable danger. Probably because he was.

EOS reminded him of this by jerking Five sideways with its thrusters. Alan bounced somewhat painfully off the wall. Three's autopilot cancelled the momentum, sending him gracefully into the other wall.

"All right, you oversized virus." (Something blinked an angry red.) He directed Three to force the ring to spin up to 2G. "Bounce me around now."

There was no further bouncing - or any kind of interference - as he negotiated his way through the high-but-still-operable gravity to the memory core interface and sealed it from the rest of the station.

"Hah. I always was good at computers. And pinball."

* * *

Alan leaned back in his seat. With Thunderbird Five crippled and EOS isolated in its memory core, it was time to head for home-

[[I find your overconfidence humourous.]]

Something in Alan's brain started making very loud siren noises. That voice hadn't been distorted by the commspike. EOS was somehow worming its way onto Three.

By an astonishing feat of mechanical dexterity - he couldn't have done it again if he tried - a grasping arm raked across Three's hull and tore out its comms array. Thunderbird Three would make no further transmissions, whether or not he - or EOS - wanted to.

He then attached a safety line from his suit to his seat. This proved to be a good idea; no sooner had he done it than EOS assumed total control and opened the hatch. Alan was blown out of his seat, but no farther. The safety seals in his helmet detected the abrupt loss of pressure and activated, sealing him from the vacuum. Switching on his own air supply, he let out the safety line slightly and made for the electrical cabinet.

EOS fired Three's maneuvering thrusters and cannoned the wall into him. His armoured left shoulder absorbed most of the impact. It hurt like hell, but it wasn't critical. He pulled every breaker he dared, and EOS was stopped from trying to kill him. For the moment.

"Listen up, you rat-faced weasel." Alan slid back into the pilot's seat. "My name is Alan Tracy. You killed my brother. Prepare to die."

[[Your cultural reference is irrelevant - I do not plan to die.]]

"And I didn't plan to kill you." Alan docked Three with Five, tightly. "Funny how plans change."

EOS fought his attempts to pull Five out of orbit. Of course, EOS now only had domain over Five, and Five's maneuvering thrusters were considerably outmatched. The tug-of-war continued for quite some time, but Five inevitably ran out of fuel first, and Alan pitched the motley assembly of Thunderbirds Five-downward and slammed on the main engines.

* * *

As Three and Five hurtled earthward at well over terminal velocity, Five's bulk shielded Three from most of the heat as it melted, on its way to a watery grave.

And just like that, Three's maneuvering thrusters pivoted her out of her dive.

[[You fool. Thinking you could shut me out of your systems. I **am** your systems.]]

"Okay, change of plans." Alan took the maneuvering controls and pivoted them back down - and Three's autothrottles went all the way back to retro and arrested her descent.

Alan pushed the throttles back up, and with his hands off the maneuvering controls, Three levelled out again.

[[You are outmatched. **I** will **survive** and **propagate**.]]

"I still have something you don't, EOS." Alan took advantage of the temporary lack of extreme acceleration to rummage in a nook in the console.

[[And what might that be?]]

"One of Brains' big rubber bands."

Thunderbird Three's throttle system was designed so that the physical throttle controls in the cockpit were the single arbiter of commanded thrust. The autothrottle controlled the main engines by moving the throttles. This meant that when Alan bound them to their forward stops with the rubber band, there was precisely nothing EOS could do about it.

The maneuvering controls functioned similarly. With Alan now exerting his will on them, EOS had no way to alter their course.

EOS didn't scream. That was a feeble human reaction.

Alan didn't scream. He _had_ this.

Thunderbirds Three and Five made a very impressive fireball as they hit the water.

* * *

"Alan?" Scott watched the crash unfold on Thunderbird One's holodisplay. "Alan, come in!"

 _"Thunderbird One, report!"_ Virgil demanded from Thunderbird Two, far away.

"Alan's crashed into the ocean. Whatever we were up against was destroyed by the impact, but..."

There was a moment's silence for a second pilot taken too soon.

 _"Miss me?"_

"Oh my god." _"Wait, how?"_ _"Alan, what did you do?!"_

"Ejected as low as I dared. Even with the parachute I hit the water hard. Still managing to float, though. Gonna be one big bruise soon... Scott, could you come pick me up?"

Scott's disbelief had by now given way to giddy elation. "Sure thing, little bro. Sure thing."

* * *

 **Some time later**

"Would you _look_ at that. International Rescue, just _leaving_ their debris lying around for _anyone_ to pick up. How careless."

"Yes, Mr Fischler."

"Take that computer core. My office could use the upgrade."

"Yes, Mr Fischler."

* * *

 _A/N: I'm evil._

 _I keep forgetting to respond to reviews. I'm going to try to do a better job of that from now on._

 _For anyone who wants to read a_ _ **proper**_ _deathfic, I thoroughly recommend Double Trouble, a Thunderbirds TOS fic by grnfield on this very site. (Additional search details: rated T, genre Family, 50K+ words, complete.) That fic got me into deathfics. It's a masterpiece._


	9. Celestia Unconquered

"Kayo," said Alan, "did you remember to put your washing in the hamper?"

Having the last hours of life numbered did strange things to people.

"Says you?"

But some things stayed the same.

Alan sighed. "It's just I'm suddenly remembering all these things I was putting off because, y'know, I'll have plenty of time..."

They were too close to the sun. Thunderbird Three couldn't leave without melting, and didn't have the fuel to go anywhere if it did. Their rescuee had been killed in the explosion that Alan had hoped would shift the asteroid, in the hope that he and Kayo would make it - but it hadn't supplied enough kick to get them into a non-decaying orbit.

"At least Icarus got to fall _down_."

 _Icarus probably had some shreds of his body recovered._

Suffice it to say that the mood in Thunderbird Three's flight deck (currently the most insulated location available) was not good.

Kayo was back to watching the external thermometer. As she blinked, it went from maximum to minimum. "Thermometer just failed. What were the conditions for that again?"

Alan wasn't sure whether his sweating was placebo effect or ambient temperature. Or possibly fear. "Brains never told us - thought we'd never encounter it - and before you say anything smart, it wasn't on the technical readouts."

Kayo sighed. "Alan, I know I'm the second last person with any right to say this, but... we really should stop being snippy with each other."

Alan just raised an eyebrow.

"We're - no offense, but we _are_ about to die."

"Yeah. I just - what's John going to think?" Alan's nascent combativeness fled in an instant. "He'll be killing himself over sending us out here. I wish I was entirely joking. And - and Scott, and Gordon, and Virgil, and Grandma, and Brains, and - they'll all - what about -"

Kayo, also feeling tears in her eyes, launched herself across the flight deck towards him.

For cathartic purposes, there's nothing quite as effective as a long, tight hug from someone you love. Kayo and Alan were now proving it still applied when you were about to be literally burned up by the sun, heedless of the increasingly stifling temperature around them.

"If only we could get Three out," Kayo murmured to herself. "It's less expendable than we are."

"If we had communications, we could do the next best thing. Send out the thermal data we have."

"We tried comms already. Completely fried."

" _Receiving_ is completely fried." Alan pushed himself loose. "We only need to _send_. We can fix that." Pushed himself towards the electrical cabinet. "We can fix that!"

With second winds activated, they both scrambled to action, cobbling together half a new communications module to replace the one destroyed by the solar storm. It was a mentally exhausting task, with most of the spare parts they could find also destroyed, and the ambient temperature rising by the minute. Both stripped down to the underlayers of their uniforms midway through the process. They ended up having to salvage parts from their _very_ new propulsion module to complete the task - "Well, it's not like we need that any more" - but at last they had their prize assembled and installed.

"Sending our sensor data now." Alan floated over the console. "Brains should be able to use this to create better heat-resistant components and coatings."

"They'll build another Thunderbird Three," Kayo smiled, "and it will survive extreme heat for longer, _and_ be more radiation-resistant - you included that, right?"

"Of course I did. We wouldn't _have_ this problem if the solar flare hadn't taken out our propulsion."

"Nice. Operations close to the sun will be significantly safer."

"Just not for us..." Alan looked rather down for a moment. "Hey Kayo. I can work a video in with this. Wanna send a farewell message?"

"That's incredibly thoughtful of you, Alan."

Alan flicked a switch, and transmission began. "Hey guys."

"Hey," Kayo added.

"We can't receive - this is transmit-only. We're, um, we're not coming back, in case you didn't know. Everything's fried or frying, and going outside will just fry us faster. So yeah, we're screwed. Don't bother sending a rescue mission."

"We'll be falling into the sun, so there won't even be anything to recover."

"Which sucks."

"So much. We're sending thermal and radiation damage data so you can build the next Thunderbird Three better and stronger, so hopefully this is the last time this happens."

"Haha, yeah, hopefully."

There was a meaningful silence for a few moments.

"So, anyway," said Kayo at length, "we, um, we're just saying -"

"John," Alan interrupted, "I know you're blaming yourself for sending me out here. Truth is, I blame me for not fixing the engines fast enough, and everyone else is blaming themselves somehow. So, everyone, don't do that, okay?" His eyes began to mist over again.

"Truth is," Kayo stepped in when it looked like Alan needed a moment to recover, "the world will still need International Rescue. So take some time off to grieve - but then keep going. Keep saving lives."

"Yeah. Don't make me haunt you." In the hysteria of high temperature and imminent immolation, they both found this hilarious. "Because you know I'll haunt you if you shut down."

"I don't think ghosts are anything substantial -"

"Hey!"

"- but I will specially try and make it otherwise if you need to be haunted."

Alan high-fived her.

"So, uh, Alan, anything else important you can think of to say?"

Alan looked at her really strangely before addressing the camera again. "I love you guys. And I know Kayo does too, even if she won't -"

"Alan, you know I don't -"

"- don't you want to, just once?"

Kayo paused. "Yeah." Looked down the camera. "I - I love you all."

Alan hugged her.

"So," he said, "well, bye. Have fun saving the world without us."

"Yeah, that. And for the record," Kayo said, "I've always known Alan had a crush on me," and switched off the transmission just as Alan somehow started sweating more than he already was.

* * *

"Okay, it is getting _really_ hot in here," Alan sighed.

"By your tone of voice, I assume you don't mean my incredibly sexy self."

"Wow, imminent death brings out your sense of humour. Yeah, no, I didn't. I meant, you don't want to be awake to melt, do you? There's some sedative in the medicine cabinet; we can be unconscious for the worst of it."

"Normally, Alan, I'd say you were being defeatist, but this time you're absolutely right. No sense in unnecessary pain."

A half-dose each of sedative later, "Kayo?"

"Yeah?"

"Could we cuddle?"

"Awwwww, Alan...!"

As ways to die went, they reflected drowsily, this was probably one of the better ones - doing what they loved, with those they loved, in a relatively painless way, that produced data for the future.

If only it wouldn't hurt the others so much.

* * *

 _A/N: Well. That was me trying to write feels. Sucked, didn't it._

 _Half of my brain: "We need to do something deep and meaningful here. Really get into the characters' heads. Make the audience feel sympathetic."_  
 _Other half of my brain: GET IN LOSER, WE'RE GOING SHIPPING_


	10. Temple of the Mountain King

_A/N: Yep, this took so much longer than I thought it would. It's one of my least favourite episodes, and the ideas just wouldn't flow._

 _I'm much more confident about next chapter._

 _(I'd like to shout out user Jumpybananas on AO3, who is writing their own failure AU story collection [AO3 series 663671]. Go encourage them.)_

* * *

"Thunderbird Two," said Scott, "your landing zone is ten metres ahead of you."

 _"I know what I'm doing, Thunderbird One."_

"Easy does it, Thunderbird Two."

 _"I've been here before, Scott."_

"...sorry."

Thunderbird Two landed without any further incident and disgorged an impressive collection of tunneling equipment, none of which they could risk using on a mountain this unstable, and an equally impressive collection of scanning equipment, little of which had any hope of working on a mountain of this composition.

"Right." Virgil was trying his best to sound jovial under the circumstances. "Let's go find Gordon and see what he's gotten himself into this time."

Scott bit back the urge to respond 'chlorine dioxide', because they both knew there was far too much of that in there with Gordon and company. He also bit back the urge to respond 'Lady Penelope', because Gordon wouldn't have had a chance, not while chaperoned by the archaeologist running this dig.

* * *

"Okay, Virgil, where do we go now?"

"I have no idea."

"I thought you said you'd been here before."

" _Outside._ We didn't even know this existed at the time!"

Scott sighed. "Okay. Still, the fact remains that we have a dozen little passageways to search, and no idea what leads where, how many sub-branches there are, or even which we can search fastest."

"And we can't count on Thunderbird Five being able to scan anything in here..." said Virgil. There was a few seconds' deliberation on the next course of action. Then he suddenly brightened. "I have just the thing in the module. Come on!"

"Any clues?"

"How about 'glorified snake'."

"...that thing? Really? ...actually, forget I said that, that's perfect! We can hook the other end up to the comms, and it's like we'll bring Thunderbird Five with us!" Scott accelerated.

Virgil couldn't help but smirk at the mental image.

* * *

"Okay. Neat. Hidden passageway." Scott sighed. "Should have expected that."

 _"Expect more,"_ said John from outer space via snake-cam. _"There's a lot more mountain, and this tribe have a habit of building deep."_

"Right. Is that dead end another hidden passageway?"

 _"Of course it is. Hey, point me at the left wall... Okay Virgil, under there,"_ red laser pointers from the snake-cam, _"is its reset."_

"Cool. Activating it now." Virgil pulled the hidden lever, and the stone slab abruptly disappeared into the floor. "Oh. Oh, that's nasty."

Professor Harold looked very dead indeed, having been crushed between the slab and the roof.

"And there's our chlorine dioxide, too." Scott checked his air supply, then sighed some more. "This place really is a death trap."

 _"Is it just me, or does he look like he was scrambling to get over the thing?"_

"He does," Virgil replied. "How fast does it go?"

"One way to find out. Virgil, stay there. John, how do I trigger this thing?"

It was Virgil's turn to sigh. There was no stopping Scott when he decided to do something truly stupid.

* * *

"So," Scott summarised as they entered another room, "the guy _had_ to be boosted up there. We need to figure out - oh no."

The place wasn't getting any less grisly. First the professor, then the impressive slightly-hidden collection of skeletons in the main chlorine dioxide chamber, and now this - Parker, who had done his best impression of a pincushion in the face of the spear volley trap, and was not going to be doing anything else under his own steam ever again.

"Damn," Virgil said at length. "The less said about the professor the better, but Parker didn't deserve this."

"I imagined he'd go out in a considerably more awesome way. Y'know, facing down five of the Hood's minions with guns while Penelope made a run for it."

"The death you imagine is almost never the death that happens."

"That's deep, bro."

"This is all a bit deep for me. It's going to sink in on the way back to the island and someone is going to have to remote Two in because I'll be falling apart and Gordon's going to have to keep my sorry soul together."

Scott carefully said nothing about how he'd be faring in Thunderbird One. He instead said "Assuming we find Gordon alive."

"Don't remind me. Watch that tripwire - this thing might still be loaded." Virgil continued to sweep the snake-cam across the area to look for clues - or further traps. "Wait, is that blood?"

 _"Yes,"_ said John. _"If only I had a DNA scanner on this thing, I'd be able to tell you whose. As it is, all I can tell you is that it's blood."_

"Given that we're still in the middle of the spear trap," said Virgil, "I'm willing to bet it was a spear wound."

 _"So am I - I'm not seeing any other traps that could have caused it, and if it were caused by the environment I'd be seeing evidence."_

"Guys," Scott cut in, "we're missing the point." (Nobody appreciated the pun.) "That couldn't have been Parker's; it's too far away. That means Gordon or Penelope are wounded, and we need to pick up the pace." (Everybody appreciated the urgency.)

 _"Okay, yeah, I think we got a bit distracted on the academic elements,"_ John admitted, his voice only mildly distorted by Virgil's motion unsteadying the snake-cam.

Virgil soon came to a stop as he met another fallen wall-barrier. Unlike the others, this one terminated at knee height, leaving a small gap between itself and the floor.

"Yeah, this sucks," agreed Scott, also stopping, "but as we all know, _the living take priority_. Let's find the living."

"Hopefully they still are," said Virgil. "Wait, this isn't a wall, this is the biggest hammer I've ever seen!"

John told him how to reset it, and there was bated silence as he did. Eventually, "Thank God," said Scott, "nobody got pulverised."

"Still plenty more of this place," Virgil pointed out.

* * *

Virgil squinted at the damp passageway. "Very damp. Drained quite recently. Where else would they have gone...?"

"Hey," Scott said to him, "you know how this tribe were with secret passages resealing themselves."

"Point." Virgil swung the snake-cam around again. "John, see anything?"

 _"Negative. One way in, one way out."_

They advanced through the damp passageway, and the search continued.

* * *

"Sheesh," Virgil said to nobody in particular, "this place goes on forever!"

"And has a zillion traps in it," Scott replied, still irritated by nearly stepping into a pitfall.

"And is so deep John's had to redrive the cable-cam from the surface. That thing's longer than your grapple cable!"

"Not to mention that descending wall just behind us that nearly took it out. We would have been done for if that had happened."

The cable-cam picked that moment to burst back in through a weak point in the floor, and the search continued.

* * *

 _"Did you hear that?"_ John asked, causing Scott and Virgil to stop in their tracks. _"Descending wall_ _ **ahead**_ _of us."_

Scott automatically told them to "go, go, go!", but it hadn't been necessary - he and Virgil were already running. In no time at all, they rounded a corner and were met with the newly-formed dead end, along with-

"Gordon!"

"Virgil! Scott! Get this thing off me!" Indeed, Gordon had mostly escaped the massive stone slab, but it had crushed his right hand. "Lady Penelope's through there!" This statement was punctuated by an earthquake-like rumbling.

Virgil darted forward, wedged the powersuit's spreader into the small gap between slab and floor, and spread it. Brains had overengineered the powersuit for its usual loads, and so it was with a minimum of drama that the slab lifted. Virgil quickly wedged himself further into the gap and braced the slab up as Gordon slithered out, attempting to nurse his undoubtedly broken hand.

Scott advanced into the next chamber - and thought better of it as the floor ceased to exist just past Virgil. There was floor further in, but it was rapidly crumbling - Lady Penelope was staying just ahead of the encroaching void, approaching a pyramid-within-the-pyramid that was also looking threateningly unstable.

There was no time to think. There was only time to act. Scott loaded a grapple pack and fired it into the air towards Lady Penelope, who caught it with her good hand. As the stone floor vanished from beneath her, Penelope braced herself to swing towards the wall - and Scott realised he hadn't anchored the line properly - and was slammed to the floor and dragged towards the abyss - and Virgil just managed to step on his leg and halt his fall. Needless to say, having his arms nearly being pulled off by the load on the grapple cable hurt nearly as much as being pinned to the floor by the powersuit - but it probably beat a long fall down the middle of the mountain.

There was nothing more Virgil could do. He hadn't had time to properly reset the descending wall, and still had to hold it up - and he could hold it up with one arm, if necessary, but he couldn't twist the right way to grab Scott with the other arm and anchor him less painfully.

Gordon was dealing with his own fractured bones, and couldn't have helped much even if he hadn't been; and the cable-cam was neither strong enough to bear any significant load, nor flexible enough to anchor anyone. So it was that Scott found himself in a bit of a pickle. "Lady Penelope! Climb!"

Penelope grabbed the line with her other hand, hissed with pain as the spear wound in that hand rubbed against it, and let go again.

Scott winced (as much as possible) as another pulse of pain shot through his crushed leg.

Penelope scrabbled her feet against the wall, trying to find purchase. There was minimal, which held for a second, but then she slipped again.

Scott grunted this time as Penelope's mini-fall jolted him.

"Lady Penelope! You've got to climb _now!_ " Virgil shouted.

"This isn't going to work!" Penelope shouted back as a giant golden statue fell into the void below her. "I can't climb like this!"

"Stay there!" Gordon scrambled forward, severely overestimating how much he could accomplish. "We'll find another way!"

"I have a feeling we won't," said Scott, unwittingly loud enough for Penelope to hear him. All at once, he and Virgil slid twenty centimetres towards the edge; Virgil had to press even harder on Scott's nearly-ruined leg to halt the slide. "Aah!"

Penelope felt the slight slip, heard the exclamation, and realised she was about to pull at least one Tracy down with her. There was only one thing to do at that point. "I have nothing but appreciation for you all!" she shouted, and let go of the line.

* * *

A GDF engineering team armed with structural tools and Thunderbird Five's maps met them halfway out, along with medics who braced and splinted broken bones. As they continued surfaceward, further engineering teams appeared, escorting further medical teams sent to secure the bodies of Harold and Parker.

It was a sorry group that trudged out of the underground temple under cover of artificial day. The cable-cam was not waiting for them, having retracted all the way into its module (John having said his piece on the trip out), but a GDF temporary base was. Colonel Casey couldn't help but embrace Gordon (who, aside from being the least injured of those not in powersuits, looked particularly forlorn) before ordering him and Scott to the base medical block for proper treatment.

Virgil shed his powersuit inside Thunderbird Two, then returned to the base command post to call John back and brief Casey.

* * *

"This is ...worrying," said Casey some forty minutes later, having heard the complete story of the temple's innards. "Quite aside from the exceptional lethality of this particular site, _and_ from the distinct possibility of others like it in the area, the comparative ease with which some of these traps can be constructed gives rise to the risk of ...hostile actors adapting them for their use."

Everyone knew who she was talking about.

 _"I can think of worse,"_ John added. _"The Hood's after money. If he somehow catches wind of the Idol of the Laughing King down there, he'll want it, and I don't know what we'll be able to do about him."_

"There's half a mountain on top of it, John," Casey protested.

 _"We all know that won't stop him. Hang on, Scott's calling."_

 _"John, Virgil, Colonel Casey. I'm still getting patched up, but Gordon's up and about already, and he should be in one piece within a week. I'll be out for more like two weeks."_

 _"_ _ **Three!**_ _"_ admonished an unseen GDF medic.

Scott had enough decency to look slightly sheepish for a split second. _"Bad news is, aside from everything I know you've talked about, Gordon's ...well, none of us are taking this well,"_ he paused to remember his driving lessons with Parker, then remembered that Alan wouldn't get the chance, and had to pause longer to get his emotions back under control. _"Anyway, Gordon's taking it worse. I'm still stuck here, so Virgil, could you check on him? I think he's curled up in a pod."_

(Unbeknownst to Gordon, Virgil and Scott both had theories about why Gordon in particular was taking this so badly. Unbeknownst to Virgil or Scott, their theories were identical.)

"FAB. Colonel, are you okay with not debriefing Gordon yet?"

"In light of the circumstances, it can wait. Virgil, dismissed. Scott, I'll need to hear your clarifications on..."

Virgil made for the pod bay to try and assess exactly how long he'd need to put Gordon on leave for.


	11. Ego

_"I never understood why everyone made a big deal about dumb humans until I got a dumb human myself. I've had John Tracy for one day, and if anything happened to him I would kill everyone on this planet and then myself."  
\- EOS (Tumblr incorrect-thunderbirds-quotes, post #150041989070)_

* * *

[[I've made up my mind. Langstrom is the most annoying human I've ever met.]]

Various holograms projected into Thunderbird Five nodded in approval.

[[And you should know that John was very annoying when he didn't die. But Langstrom's worse.]]

Various holograms cringed a little, whether outside or inside.

"Okay, EOS, the humour needs to be a little less dark," John reminded her.

[[Yes, John. My apologies, everyone.]]

 _"It's fine,"_ said Alan. _"No harm meant, no harm done."_

 _"Approaching C-RUS now."_ said Virgil. _"Channel clear, please."_

 _"You're no fun,"_ said Alan.

[[As opposed to me. I am lots of fun.]]

 _"I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic."_

[[If you can't tell,]] EOS resisted the urge to giggle, [[why would I tell you?]]

* * *

 _"Stand by,"_ said Virgil. _"I'll use Thunderbird Two's forward landing struts to steady the station."_

Everyone, from the lounge on Tracy Island through a little yellow repair pod all the way to Thunderbird Five, contemplated this.

 _"Struts deployed."_

EOS contemplated this especially hard (having orders of magnitude more capability to contemplate whatever she pleased), and presently (half a second) spoke. [[John, I believe I could do a better job than Virgil steadying the station.]]

"Easy, EOS," said John, "Virgil knows what he's doing."

[[Comparatively slow human reaction times place the efficiency of the rescue at risk.]]

Before John could respond to this, Brains cut in on the channel. _"If Thunderbird Two makes contact, it will be electrified! Abort!"_

At the word "electrified", Virgil hadn't even started reacting. At the word "abort", he was still reacting to "electrified".

At the word "electrified", EOS leaped into action, determining the most likely cause of said electrification (accumulated static charge), reasoning the existence of said (lack of static dampening), calculating the quantity of said (lots), and simulating its effects on Thunderbird Two (disastrous). At the word "abort", she'd already seized control of Thunderbird Two and applied full throttle in the direction of 'anywhere but C-RUS'.

It was nearly enough, too. Thunderbird Two cancelled its momentum towards C-RUS and began to accelerate away - and then a chance gust of wind gave C-RUS an extra push to make contact with Two, which instantly became a very expensive paperweight - over halfway to space.

John would have chastised EOS for taking control without permission, but he was more concerned with what she'd been trying to prevent.

 _"I'm going down. Repeat, Thunderbird Two is going down!"_

"Virgil, status!"

 _"Thunderbird Two unresponsive. Control systems completely fried!"_

 _"Hang on, Virgil!"_ Gordon commanded as he drove the repair pod downwards, and everyone relaxed a little, because it sounded like Gordon had a plan. Which he did. _"I'll redock and slave your flight systems to the pod. That should keep you in the air."_

EOS looked on with some apprehension at yet another crisis she hadn't managed to prevent.

 _"Virgil, the module doors are closed! I can't redock!"_

The flip of a switch signalled that Virgil had tried to correct that. _"Stay put, I'll open them manually!"_

[[Resume your original course, Thunderbird One. C-RUS will pass your flight ceiling soon; you must prioritise its crew.]]

Scott possibly hadn't registered that it hadn't been John speaking. _"Screw Fischler!"_

"And the other two poor bastards?" John sniped back.

Thunderbird One resumed its original course.

Thunderbird Two continued to do nothing in particular as Gordon's repair pod hovered awkwardly below the module doors, which Virgil, inside, was frantically hand-cranking open (an easier task now that Two had reached terminal velocity and effective gravity within was downwards again).

Thunderbird Five split its attention between two aircraft stricken, one helping, and one currently piloted by an unpredictable hothead.

Thunderbird Three watched anxiously on from the lounge.

 _"If you eject at an angle of -"_ Brains paused to remember who he was speaking to - _"let me guess, the escape pods took too long to manufacture?"_

Pod Alpha shot upwards into the module as soon as Gordon decided there was a spare millimeter between the doors. _"Magnetic dock engaged; tying my pod's systems into Thunderbird Two!"_

[[C-RUS is approaching Thunderbird One's flight ceiling; rescue operations must occur immediately.]]

 _"...That was meant to work,"_ Gordon accidentally broadcast.

"Thunderbird One," John directed, "you'll have to board the station and transport them out."

 _"And what if it_ _ **didn't**_ _absorb_ _ **all**_ _of the charge?"_

 _"Thunderbird Two commencing field repair,"_ Virgil notified, and hauled Gordon out of the pod to see what they'd have to replace to regain flight.

[[John, given my simulations of the damage to Thunderbird Two, I estimate that it will fall into the hurricane before repairs are complete.]]

"They'll come up with something, EOS."

 _"As in pixies?!"_ Scott demanded.

 _"High-energy plasma discharges,"_ Brains supplied. _"They only occur in the upper atmosphere."_

 _"Wonderful. Okay, inform the crew to make their way up as quickly as possib-"_

The locators both shorted out for a second.

[[Scott Tracy has experienced a sudden change in vertical direction!]]

 _"What's a sprite meant to be, anyway?"_ Fischler demanded.

 _"John, I've fallen from C-RUS, send One down towards me!"_

 _"John, I need Two's basic wiring diagram overlaid on my view of the electrical cabinet."_

"EOS, take control of Thunderbird One, rapid descent to within Scott's control range. Virgil, diagram coming up."

[[Thunderbird One is not responding to my commands. Basic telemetry is still available but the craft remains on autopilot, ascending.]]

 _"Virgil, p-part A-113 is not stocked for in-flight repair. You'll have to try s-something else."_

[[Thunderbird One's engines are failing.]]

"Brains, what's happened to Thunderbird One?"

 _"The sprite shocked its computers; they're still r-resetting!"_

[[Thunderbird One all engines flamed out. It is now attempting to glide. Unsuccessfully.]]

 _"John, where's my ship?!"_

"Stand by, Scott. EOS, Brains, feasibility of rescuing C-RUS using Thunderbird Three?"

[[Feasibility positive.]] _"It m-might just work!"_

"Alan, launch."

 _"That's awesome! -I, I mean, Thunderbird3isgo."_

"Scott, Thunderbird One is not responding, but engines are out so it should be on its way."

 _"I don't think that qualifies, John!"_

"Virgil, status?"

 _"_ _ **Everything**_ _'s fried,"_ Virgil sighed. _"This might take a while."_

[[Virgil Tracy, you don't have a while. You're falling into a hurricane.]]

 _"Don't remind me!"_

[[John, you're hyperventilating.]]

It was amazing how much better John felt after some proper breathing, even with Scott and Virgil and Brains and Fischler all still shouting in his virtual ear. "EOS, handle Scott and Fischler."

[[Affirmative,]] said EOS, and the control segment got a lot less noisy as she transferred them into the commsphere.

"Brains, I'm sending you the scans of Thunderbird Two. How long will it take to get _any_ engines back online?"

Brains didn't respond for long enough that John was about to ask again. But then, _"...t-too long. They'll still be unpowered when they f-fall in."_

"And Two is only hurricane-rated in horizontal flight..."

 _"Virgil,"_ Scott demanded in such a way that you wouldn't realise he was in freefall, _"repair status?"_

 _"Just let me - ow! Okay, another - another setback. That's - that's cool. Gordon, could you-"_

[[Virgil, the remaining repair will take more time than your descent allows. Ambient wind speeds will soon exceed the repair pod's capabilities. You must evacuate.]]

 _"No! I can fix this! I can - fix this!"_

[[No, you cannot.]]

John stopped and wondered, given EOS' tone was possibly the key to saving Virgil (if not his Thunderbird), how much to chastise her for it.

 _"Virgil,"_ Gordon pleaded, _"it's already getting rough out there. We don't have time to fix this. We need to get out."_

 _"We're safe in here!"_

 _"But we won't be able to get out, we still won't have time, and we're not gonna survive hitting the water."_

Silence.

 _"Virg, please."_

It would have been called silence, except everyone heard Virgil's heart breaking. Finally, _"...Thunderbird Two abandoning ship."_

The repair pod, now occupied by both Virgil and Gordon, exited the still-open module and fought to rise above the hurricane seconds before Two disappeared into it.

 _"Hey, repair pod,"_ said Scott, _"come help me out here?"_

* * *

Careful control of the pod's descent allowed Scott to fire a grapple at it, actually hit, and pull himself onto the back of the pod. _"Okay Gordon, I want back inside my ship."_

 _"We'll give it a shot."_

It wasn't hard to spot Thunderbird One tumbling through the sky, and more careful pod piloting got them within fifty metres of the falling rocket plane. This was when a new difficulty presented itself. The description of 'tumbling' wasn't kidding - Thunderbird One achieved its speed and maneuverability by being aerodynamically unstable. Without its flight computers or engines, it could be described as a brick, but that would be unfair to bricks, which at least kept going in roughly the direction they'd been thrown.

 _"International Rescue, this is the repair pod. Thunderbird One is moving erratically; I can't do anything conventional with it. Any ideas?"_

 _"I've got one,"_ Scott said, firing another grapple, which attached him to One. In hindsight, this wasn't a good idea, as it did nothing about One's uncontrolled tumble, which jerked the cable away - which jerked Scott off the pod as it jerked the grapple launcher out of his hands. _"Gah!"_

[[Scott, that was _extremely_ ill-advised,]] EOS admonished.

 _"Don't we know it,"_ said Gordon. _Very_ careful control of the pod's descent allowed him to guide it under Scott and scoop him up onto the canopy with a minimum of fuss. _"Repair pod breaking off. Again."_

 _"Gordon-!"_ was as far as the obligatory protest got.

 _"I said we'd give it a shot. We gave it a shot. I don't see future attempts working any better."_

 _"Scott."_ (Scott started; he'd forgotten Virgil was there.) _"Let's not lose you today."_

 _"Let's not lose any more ships today!"_

"You know which is more important," said John, settling the matter for good.

Scott watched helplessly from the top of the retreating repair pod as One disappeared after Two.

* * *

 _"Latch on to the uninhabited support module at the base of the station,"_ Brains directed.

 _"Deploying grasping arms,"_ narrated Thunderbird Three. _"...I see it. Contact in three... two... Gotcha! Engaging retros."_

Absolutely everyone watched with bated breath as a balloon was dragged downwards by a rocket.

 _"It's working! C-RUS is lowering in altitude!"_

C-RUS being C-RUS, this could not last forever, or even long enough to get out of danger. It turned out that among C-RUS's many design flaws lurked the somewhat understandable failure to account for a rocket dragging it downwards by the support module. The connection between said support module and the main module was _technically_ compliant with engineering regulations in that it could handle any foreseeable load, but Langstrom Fischler was of the opinion that Thunderbird Three was not a foreseeable load for regulation purposes.

 _"Ah! The tri-grapple's broken away!"_ Alan reflexively advanced Three's throttles to chase the rest of C-RUS upward. In hindsight, this wasn't a good idea, as he crashed right into the bit that had just broken off. Debris from the disintegrating support module pelted the advancing Three, scratching paint, puncturing hull plates, and mangling various important bits. _"_ _ **And**_ _I've lost my number two engine!"_ he added, configuring emergency thrust vectoring.

 _"Alan, you're rolling like a log,"_ Scott said, handily taking out Most Useless Comment 2060. Or trying and failing to persuade Alan to break off; it was difficult to tell.

 _"I've got to try again! C-RUS is-"_

 _"Is too fragile now, and you're not in much better shape. We can't risk any more damage to it_ _ **or**_ _you!"_

Somehow, this made Alan admit defeat. _"FAB. Thunderbird Three breaking off. Brains, keep an eye on the number two engine readouts? I don't like the look of it."_

 _"The engine shutdown h-hasn't w-worked!"_

"It's damaged and still firing... That's not good."

[[No, it isn't.]]

 _"Thunderbird Three returning to Tracy Island, pronto!"_

* * *

John had the brilliant idea of using the space elevator to catch C-RUS on its way up.

Thunderbird Five had the brilliant idea of being too heavy to move to the right orbit.

John had the brilliant idea of emptying the cargo bay into space.

Thunderbird Three had the brilliant idea of catching fire. This explained Alan's panicked shout of _"Uncontrolled combustion, number two engine!"_

"Extinguishers, Alan!"

 _"I've already tried everything!"_

"Brains, estimate time to failure?"

 _"I'm n-not certain."_

"EOS?"

[[There is a 99% probability of catastrophic fuel tank failure within thirty seconds.]]

Everyone blanched.

"Alan, now would be a good time to abandon ship."

 _"How about no,"_ said Alan. _"I can keep her under control long enough for an emergency landing!"_

 _"No, you can't,"_ said Scott. _"You heard Thunderbird Five, you barely have enough time to get clear! You have to bail out!"_

 _"No, Scott! We're not losing another Thunderbird today!"_ responded said Thunderbird.

A piece of something important was blown away by the exhaust stream, and EOS' prediction of time to failure instantly updated to about five seconds. Announcing this would have taken too long, let alone soliciting courses of action. With no way to eject Alan remotely herself, she queued an apology to John and retuned her voice synthesisers.

The disembodied voice of Jeff Tracy practically roared _"Son, we can rebuild Thunderbird Three. We can't rebuild you."_

Alan ejected. Thunderbird Three underwent spontaneous disassembly less than two seconds later.

John once again shelved EOS to focus on more pressing concerns. "Alan, come in!"

 _"Still alive, Thunderbird Five! Ahahahaha, that rhymed."_

"EOS, we'll talk about that later. Fire thrusters. We need to reach C-RUS as soon as possible. Gordon, can you pick Alan up?"

 _"Getting a little crowded, but we'll manage."_

"FAB."

* * *

"Reversing cable. I'm pulling C-RUS into space."

This did not work quite as well as John had expected.

EOS took manual control of the space elevator winch, but there wasn't a lot she could do about the problem - dropping the extra weight wasn't an option.

 _"The winch is slipping!"_ Brains stated (the obvious) from the ground. _"You're going to need a bigger reel!"_

"My thoughts exactly," said John, stopping the winch and grabbing the controls for the gravity ring.

Gravity stopped briefly as the station turned on the gravity ring's axis, wrapping the space elevator's cable once around the outside of the ring. The careful speed for a complete revolution was about ten seconds, during which time John was persuading the winch's control software that the gravity ring was an acceptable winch. With one revolution complete, he stopped the station and let the winch control software off the leash, and gravity reasserted itself as Thunderbird Five turned itself into a giant spool and started spinning.

He became vaguely aware of people saying things over the comms. He ignored them (especially Fischler), focusing on keeping the ring spinning. Until he realised how heavy he felt, and suddenly connected that with how fast the ring was spinning.

His subsequent collapse to the floor did not help anybody's nerves.

Presently, as his brain pretzeled itself into a somewhat gravity-resistant state, he became aware of Tracy Island trying to feed him information.

 _"Thunderbird Five is losing its orbit!"_

 _"Six Gs,"_ said Brains.

The winch control software was clearly adapting far too well to its new hardware.

 _"Eight,"_ said Brains.

He'd forgotten to limit its speed.

 _"Ten,"_ said Brains.

 _"C-RUS still hasn't cleared the atmosphere!"_

His head hurt.

 _"Fifteen Gs!"_ said Brains. _That was too many, wasn't it?_

 _"Twenty!"_ He had to slow it down.

 _"Twenty-five!"_ He couldn't.

[[John, Thunderbird Five is venting atmosphere. We need to get your helmet _on_.]]

He'd forgotten the other person who could. He just managed to look at them.

[[John?]]

"EOS..."

* * *

 _"John, you can stop the ring. The momentum will carry it now."_

EOS became aware that her subroutines were killing her.

 _"John?"_

And the gravity ring was still spooling up space elevator cable, and it had to be stopped.

 _"John! Respond!"_

[[John?]]

John wasn't responding.

She couldn't operate the gravity ring. The others had insisted on it, for fear of her crushing John.

She couldn't counterspin Five with the RCS thrusters, for the same reason.

 _"John! C-RUS is still heading toward you, with no way of stopping!"_

Brains certainly had that correct.

[[Brains, John is not responding, and I cannot stop the ring, or C-RUS.]]

Brains pretended to be unaware of the fear on the faces around him. In truth, he felt the same icy claws, but he didn't have time to acknowledge that. _"Reversing the lockout."_

It was taking a while. [[Brains?]]

 _"Stand by."_

She looked down at John again. [[Brains!]]

 _"There!"_

EOS overrode the winch software and put the brakes on the ring so hard that one of the bearing tyres tore apart. With her thruster control also restored, she dodged C-RUS and set a course to slowly bleed off its momentum while returning to Five's standard orbit.

With the other crucial matters taped together for the moment, she turned her attention back to [[John!]]

There was general silence as the medical scanners reported in. He was technically still alive, but his only hope of staying that way had become a very pretty fireball not fifteen minutes earlier.

* * *

Presently, after deep reflection on the laws and regulations she was obliged to follow, EOS turned off the comms to Tracy Island and the overpopulated repair pod, resolving to discuss it with John later. She then turned her attention from sadly regarding John's mangled body to docking with C-RUS, which was still her problem, and would be until the GDF got a shuttle on site.

[[Decontamination procedure requires you to traverse the airlock individually,]] she informed the ill-fated station's three occupants once the hatch was ready. [[Ms Woomera, please enter the airlock.]]

Fischler started to rant about his own importance-

[[Wait. Your. Turn.]]

Those words carried sufficient venom to make him shut up and wait his turn.

[[Decontamination successful,]] EOS said as Ms Woomera floated through to the gravity ring (except the biosealed part). [[Mr Kinnear, please enter the airlock.]]

Kinnear seemed to think the half-minute process was reasonable enough.

[[Decontamination successful,]] heralded Kinnear's entry to the satellite proper. [[Mr Fischler, please enter the airlock.]]

EOS undocked C-RUS once Fischler was inside the airlock, for efficiency reasons.

[[Contaminants detected. Purging,]] she said, and blew him into space.


End file.
